Fourteen Ways to Fall for You
by LadyQuicksilver
Summary: Being the subjects of an alien scientific study investigating Terran romantic relationships is hardly the strangest thing that Rogue and Gambit have ever experienced. But waking up in a different reality every day for two weeks? That just might be. In this collection of 14 AU oneshots, Rogue and Gambit will have to prove that in any life, they'll find their way back to each other.
1. Prologue: the Best-Laid Plans

**Scientific Institute of Acivius **

**Acivian Empire**

**A briefing room**

"Your assignment." Kaia's commanding officer handed her a file. "Go on, read the debrief. I'll wait."

Kaia scanned the page. _Destination: Earth – homeworld of the Terran race, _it read. _Area of Inquiry: Terran social and emotional customs. Goal: to investigate whether certain Terran superstitions regarding emotional attachment and mate choice are grounded in quantifiable scientific evidence. _"Terran emotion," Kaia summarized. Outwardly she remained stoic; inwardly she glowed with pleasure at the thought that her C.O. had not only remembered but valued her keen interest in the psychology and sociology of alien races. "I understand I am to discover the truth or lack thereof behind Terran beliefs about love?"

"Correct," the officer replied. "Terrans have an interesting theory about such pairings. Many Terrans believe that each person has another person with whom they are essentially predestined to fall in love. They call them 'soulmates,' and this may seem like a far-fetched idea to you, but it seems rather worth investigating. Perhaps not a mission of world-changing importance, but a valuable one nonetheless, and one for which you in particular are extremely qualified."

"Thank you, sir," Kaia said, concealing her pride once again. "And how am I to go about finding this information?"

"Your procedures are simple. You will capture a pair of Terrans who exhibit clear physical, mental, and emotional bonds in such a way that would allow their relationship to be labeled as romantic." The officer didn't seem to flinch at the prospect of, essentially, abducting two unsuspecting people; Kaia wasn't about to admit that she had. "This will, of course, be done without harm to the subjects. They will be held for a period of two Earth weeks, each day of which you will use your Reality Augmentation tool to send them into a different life. By placing them in foreign environments, we can change the circumstances of their first meeting and how their relationship plays out after the fact. And, if they manage to find themselves in a romantic relationship in most, if not all, of our stimulations, there may be cause to believe that this concept has merit."

"I see, sir," Kaia replied. "Are the couple and stimulations to be of my choosing, or are they predesigned?"

"You are the expert here, Lieutenant Andronis, so the stimulations are to be chosen based on your expertise. You'll need to research Terran culture in order to choose fourteen different scenarios to place your subjects in. As for the couple, they have already been selected." The officer gestured towards a screen, which lit up at the motion to reveal a photograph of a couple locked in a rather…passionate embrace. Their faces appeared to be temporarily melded together and Kaia noted a distinctive streak of white in the female's hair.

"Are these my subjects?" she asked, despite knowing the answer.

"Yes, Lieutenant, they are," the officer replied. "I trust you are familiar with the human Mutants?"

"Very much so, sir," Kaia said. They'd been covered repeatedly in her studies of human sociology. "Are these two mutants, then?"

"Famous ones, in their world and a handful of others," the officer said. "They're part of a team of mutants dedicated to the Earth's defense. Perhaps you've heard of the X-Men? If you have, you'd know that these two will likely not be subdued easily. This one" – he zoomed in on the female – "is named Anna Marie LeBeau, popularly referred to as 'Rogue.' The male's name is Remy LeBeau, more commonly 'Gambit.' She can absorb the psyches of those who come into contact with her skin, and he can manipulate kinetic energy."

"And they are suitable candidates for this study…why?" Kaia asked. All she'd heard so far was that the pair would be a massive headache to capture and probably not too much fun to study, either.

"Ah, I forgot to mention. They are also married to each other."

"That makes much more sense. And you believe them to be soulmates?"

"Lieutenant, I will not believe anything of the sort unless your study of them seems to indicate that such a belief will be founded. Now, in the interest of time, I want your stimulations planned by tomorrow so that the programming team can design them. Dismissed."

"Of course, sir." Kaia nodded before turning to go.

Either this assignment would be a snap, or it'd snap _her - _there'd be no telling until it began.


	2. Day 1: of Caffeine and Carnations

**Day 1: Kaia and co.'s first virtual reality stimulation sends our hero and heroine into a fanfiction classic: the Coffee Shop AU. **

**I hope the transition between the experiment part and the AU part isn't too jarring. It sort of had to be there to explain what the heck is happening, though I wish it didn't as it's super clunky. Also, the coffee shop here is called Caffeine Nation. As in, caffeination...yup, I'm an idiot. And as a heads-up, Rogue is referred to as Anna Marie here because she isn't a mutant in this reality (no powers) and thus would probably just be called by her given name. Enjoy! **

* * *

**An Acivian Laboratory Ship - Several Weeks Later**

Kaia let out a long sigh of relief as her test subjects _finally s_topped twitching, the powerful anesthetic they'd given them finally kicking in. The two had been an absolute _disaster _to subdue and Kaia would be feeling the effects of her subjects' attempts to escape tomorrow. But for now, she had a stimulation to run.

"Remember the stipulations," Kaia reminded her team, clustered around the two cots in the center of the lab. "They are not to retain their powers, and each scenario will take place in a random geographical location. Take them out of their own realities, but do nothing to fundamentally change their personalities and inclinations." Her team nodded in silent obedience. Adjusting the transmitters on her subjects' foreheads one last time, she signaled for the virtual reality projection to begin.

The coffee shop, she'd learned in her extensive research, was somewhat of a center for socialization for Terrans, at least in the culture these two seemed to belong to. It seemed an ideal place to begin. She pressed _play _and allowed her designed stimulation to begin, watching through the cognitive projector she'd use to observe the subjects' behavior.

* * *

**Virtual Reality: Caffeine Nation coffee shop – Sedona, AZ**

Caffeine Nation was always the last stop on Remy's morning run. Conveniently located along his daily route, patronizing the coffee shop was so ingrained in his routine that most of the baristas knew him by name. He'd tip generously and flirt even more so, and there were a few who now looked forward to his daily visit. (Others decidedly did not; he chose to ignore them.) Invariably sweaty and out of breath, he looked forward to feeling the cool air conditioning pour out of the shop to greet him when he opened its doors. This day was no different. Or…he thought.

"Welcome to Caffeine Nation," an unfamiliar, tired, and distinctly _southern _voice– that was very odd in this part of the country – drawled from the counter. "What can I get for'y?" Remy approached the counter, a response on his tongue, and nearly froze.

The woman behind the counter was not among the baristas he knew by name. He'd never even seen this one, and he _knew _he would have remembered if he had. She was striking, to put it lightly. Her frizzy brown curls formed what looked (in his slightly ridiculous mind) a halo around her face, which Remy couldn't help but note was utterly adorable even with its obvious display of sleep deprivation. She looked incredibly unsatisfied with her current situation.

"You new around here?" Remy asked. "I come here every morning but I've never seen ya."

"Yes," the barista drawled. "I don't much want to be here, if I'm bein' honest, but yes. I am."

"Caffeine Nation's great. It'll win you over," Remy reassured her. He leaned his elbow against the counter and looked up at her with a wink. "Or if it don't, I will."

"Don't even try with me, pretty boy," the barista sighed. "Now tell me what kinda coffee you want or I'm gonna have to ask you to leave."

He relented, but that only convinced him more fervently to keep trying. He'd seen few people so in need of joy, and some strange emotional muscle he rarely exercised made him want to give it to her. He didn't even know her name, but…

Remy liked to think he knew a special person when he saw one.

He remembered to glance at her nametag as he left – _Anna Marie,_it read. He smiled. He'd remember that.

That afternoon, he came on his lunch break, crossing his fingers she'd be the one working the counter. He didn't usually visit more than once a day, but…it couldn't hurt, could it? "Afternoon, Anna Marie!" he crowed as soon as he burst through the doors. Sure enough, a telltale sigh met his words.

"Well, aren't you chipper," Anna Marie sighed. "How'd you know my name?"

"Nametag. And I always am when I, uh…get coffee from this place." It was the least creepy-sounding excuse he could come up with.

"It'd be great if you could get it less often," Anna Marie grumbled, probably assuming he didn't hear her. (He had.)

"You seem to hate everything," Remy commented. "What don't ya hate?"

Anna Marie gave him a hard look. "Customers who order their coffee and leave promptly. And only come in _once a day._"

"Oh, come on, _cherie," _he coaxed. "There's gotta be something you like."

Anna Marie's cheeks uncharacteristically reddened. "You speak French?" she mumbled, distracted.

_Oh, this is good, _Remy thought. "_Mais sur bien, chére. _Why, do you like it?"

"Uh…I mean…it's a nice language," Anna Marie stammered. "But that's all, really."

"Very nice," Remy agreed. "You know what else is nice?"

"You, learning to leave well enough alone?" she shot back. "I've heard about you, LeBeau, and while I know some'a my coworkers might not mind your flirtin' and loiterin', _I _most definitely do. So get your coffee and _go. Away." _

"Still think you should run with me sometime, but all right," Remy conceded. "_Au revior, hérissonne.''_

She didn't respond. _Strike two. _He'd have to keep trying.

It was absolutely_unheard-of _for Remy to drink three caffe lattes in one day, but he was beginning to think that it might be the only way to keep finding excuses to see the fascinating woman he'd become acquainted with. He tried not to appear as overly caffeinated as he was, but it didn't work. Anna Marie looked even more exhausted when he caught her eye.

"I'm flattered that you're so obsessed with me, but ya need to stop," she sighed. "I don't want to flirt with you, and I know for a _fact_you don't need as much coffee as you're crammin' into yourself just for an excuse to see me. So can you just…not?"

Remy shrugged. "All right. But…I thought this place could use a little brightening up, _non?" _he handed her the red carnations he'd decided in a blaze of romantic insanity to buy her. "If you don't want to flirt, fine. Promise I'll stop. I just…don't like seeing such a fascinatin' lady so obviously unhappy."

Anna Marie blinked rapidly, caught off-guard by his sincerity. "I, uh…thank you," she replied, clutching the carnations to her chest like a shield. "That's sweet'f ya."

"If you want to run with me tomorrow, I could always use a workout partner," he told her. "If not? Fine. I can stop coming here. But I thought you might like it. Runner's high, _chere…_it's incredible."

"You know what? Sure," Anna Marie stammered, her face flushing. "I'll take you up on that. Why not?"

Remy smiled – not in flirtation, not in jest, simply in earnest. "I'm glad, _hérissone," _he told her.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, leaning on her elbow against the countertop. "Some of us don't speak French, you know."

"Hedgehog," Remy told her, grinning unabashedly. "'Cause you're covered in spines, but adorable."

"Oh, please," she said, rolling her eyes.

Perhaps there was something to be said for flowers and hedgehogs, perhaps it was simply an inevitability – something about this boy made her clam up like a fifth-grader forgetting her lines in the school play.

Anna Marie liked to think she knew something special when she saw it, even if it took a moment to notice its specialness. But whatever the reason, she was looking forward to that run.

* * *

**Back on the Acivian Laboratory Ship**

"Thesubjects appear to be following the same patterns that led to their relationship in reality, Lieutenant."

"Yes, Girad, I can see that, thank you." Kaia continued scribbling frantically. "I wasn't expecting as much."

"Will tomorrow's stimulation be, perhaps, a bit less...convenient?"

"That can be arranged," Kaia replied. "I suppose if we want them to give us solid evidence for the existence of so-called 'soulmates,' we will have to be more...creative."

"And deal with _that_." A queasy-looking technician glanced fearfully at the cots.

Kaia's stomach clenched. The female was stirring and, before Kaia could even register the situation, she had one arm free of the restraints and an expression that could only be described as "sheer, concentrated rage."

"Is _anyone _plannin_' _on tellin' me what we're doin' here?_" _She shouted, still rather groggy.

Kaia backed up to a wall for protection. "I promise we can explain..."


	3. Day 2: Trumpetitis

**Day 2: in which Rogue and Gambit are musicians fresh out of conservatory and recently hired by their first professional orchestra.**

**Because I've always wanted to do an orchestra AU. Also, oboe mom!Jean is my NEW FAVORITE THING and I want to write more of this but never will. (Note: Cleveland is home to one of the best professional orchestras in the U.S., hence the setting.)**

* * *

**In Reality **

**Acivian Laboratory Ship **

"I promise we can explain," Kaia said, backing up to the wall as if it afforded her any protection. The irate woman thrashed against her restraints and she feared they wouldn't hold. "You are not being harmed. Nothing has been-"

"Where _am _I and _what have you done to my husband?" _

"He is also unharmed," Girad, ever the loyal assistant, stepped in. "You have been selected for a study investigating Terran relationships-"

"Study? What study? Are we lab rats now?" at least Rogue had given up trying to escape, seeing that the scientists didn't seem bent on killing her. "Where are we, what happened to us, and-"

"You are aboard an Acivian research vessel in orbit around your Earth," Kaia said, regaining composure. "This study is entirely noninvasive and you have simply been anesthetized and exposed to virtual reality stimulators."

"And y'all never thought that, I don't know, you might wanna _ask permission _before ya straight-up _kidnapped us_ for whatever freaky thought-experiment this is?"

"Perhaps that would have been wise," Kaia told her, cringing. "We could, uh…let you go if you decide you wish not to be test subjects."

"_Please," _Rogue sighed.

"_Chere? _Where are we?" Remy stirred beside her and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

"We're being experimented on by aliens," Rogue said flatly, concealing her relief at seeing him awake and intact. "I think we're fine, but that remains to be seen. They say they'll let us go."

"Experimented on?" Remy's groggy confusion had only increased. "What the-"

"The Acivian Institute of Sciences has instructed this team to use virtual reality stimulations to collect empirical evidence for or against the Terran concept of 'soulmates'," Girad recited, as if he'd been practicing. (Knowing Girad, he probably had.) "You were selected for your unique romantic bond, and we are-"

Remy looked _considerably _less displeased at the prospect than Rogue had. "Soulmates, huh?" he grinned rakishly. "Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to let 'em test us."

"Remy, this is _insane," _Rogue insisted. "We are on an _alien spacecraft. _They're usin' us _as lab rats. _Do you think for a second-"

"We're fine, though, _non?" _he tried to shrug through his restraints. "And they offered to let us go, so they're obviously not gonna kill us. So why not stay? Help 'em out, see if soulmates exist…if _we _are?"

"What, because you need a buncha aliens to tell you that I love ya?"

"Of course not, _chere, _but…after all the times we tried bein' together and it didn't work out, wouldn't it be kinda nice to know that, science-wise, there's a reason we always come back?"

Kaia scratched something onto a notepad with disturbing fervor, as if this exchange was as enlightening as anything she'd seen through the cognitive projector. "It could, indeed, be beneficial to your relationship if the experiment succeeds," she noted, looking up from her pad.

"You're nuts, Cajun," Rogue sighed. "But I guess it couldn't hurt as long as we're not missin' anything?"

"That is the wonderful thing about holograms," Kaia told them. "We've simply sent holographic versions of yourself to live your lives for the duration of the experiment."

"That isn't freaky at all," Rogue muttered. "Well, might as well, then."

"You will stay, then?" Rogue and Remy shared a _screw-it _look and nodded. "Good. Girad, the anesthetic?"

Rogue fell back into a haze with _what am I doing? _running through her mind on loop.

* * *

**Virtual Reality: an orchestra rehersal – Cleveland, Ohio **

One could hardly look inconspicuous carrying a bassoon around, but walking into her first rehearsal, Anna Marie tried not to draw the eyes of her new colleagues. She made her way to the brass section without a sound and took a seat near the other bassoonists, all of whom looked at but didn't speak to her. Her cheeks burnt under their appraising stares.

"Are you one of the new additions?" a graceful redhead in the oboe section turned to size her up. "Great to have you here. I'm Jean." She extended her hand for Anna to shake.

"Uh, Anna Marie," she replied shakily. "New bassoonist."

"Oh, are you the one who just graduated from Oberlin?" Jean asked. "I heard about you. Our conductor says you're a phenom."

"H-he did?" Anna tried not to blush, keenly aware of how unprofessional she looked, but she couldn't help it – she was barely out of conservatory and utterly green. "Thanks. That means a lot."

"Yeah, we got a couple of recent grads." Jean pointed in the direction of the brass. "That one's Remy LeBeau. Trumpet. A typical specimen of his kind, it seems – talented, massive ego, never shuts up."

Anna Marie couldn't help but giggle at that. She'd been in orchestras since she was eight and seen most of the musicians she'd grown up playing with matured in time, but trumpets never changed. They were eternally and universally cocky. "Gotta stay away from that one, huh?"

Jean simply smiled knowingly and turned back around as the conductor raised his baton. Anna Marie arranged her sheet music, moving the _Firebird _suite to the front, and raised her instrument.

She could forget for a moment, playing the instrument she'd loved for so long, the pressure she was under, and the fact that she'd thrown caution to the wind by moving out to an unfamiliar city where she knew no one for an opportunity she couldn't pass up. It was easy to let those things slip from her mind when she was lost in the music.

But when rehearsal was dismissed, and the rest of the orchestra stood milling around socializing, all of them familiar with someone when she wasn't – that brought it all back. Anna Marie considered seeking out the oboeist who'd been kind enough to chat with her earlier, but she was already occupied, hanging on the arm of the man she vaguely recognized as one of the violinists. She felt small and overwhelmed and hadn't the foggiest idea what to do about it.

"Hey, _Cherie, _are you that bassoonist I've heard so much about?" a voice piped up behind her. Anna Marie nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Um. Uh, yeah," she mumbled, turning to face the speaker. Her face fell when she identified him – the trumpeter she'd been warned about. "I'm Anna Marie. You're…Remy, was it?"

Remy raised an eyebrow. "You know me?"

She smiled sheepishly. "Jean – I mean, the principal oboe, I don't know if you know her – she warned me about you. Said I should stay away from ya."

"That so?" Remy didn't seem the least bit discouraged by that. "Nah, I'm great. I'd highly recommend me."

"I see you've got trumpetitis. Real bad trumpetitis," Anna Marie teased, reddening at the realization that she was _flirting _with this most-likely-idiotic trumpet boy.

"Trumpetitis? And what, pray tell, is _that?" _his expression was one of unabashed delight and Anna couldn't help but be endeared a _little _bit to him for it. As smarmy as he came off at first glance, he had a sincerity that was kind of sweet.

"Full'a yourself. Big ego. You know how good you are and God forbid the entire orchestra doesn't know it, too, which is why fortissimo is the only dynamic you ever play." Anna Marie grinned, challenging him to top that.

"Tha's real funny, comin' from a girl whose instrument is taller'n she is," Remy fired back. "You got spirit, Anna Marie. I like that in a woman."

"Sorry, Trumpet Boy, I'm not on the market." (Perhaps she was, but not to _him.) _"'sides, I've heard trumpetitis is contagious. Can't have that when they're all countin' on me to carry the bass line."

"Girl like you's probably been vaccinated against trumpetitis, though," Remy said, smirking. "Promise I won't infect ya."

"Look, I don't know _what _you think you're doin'" – Anna couldn't fight the smile off her face as she said it – "but you are an imbecile, and if you think I'm gonna go out with you-"

"Oh, so now you wanna go out with me? I hadn't even gone there yet."

"You really are an imbecile, Trumpet Boy."

"An imbecile you'd go out to dinner with tonight?" Remy extended his arm theatrically. "You don't know anyone, I don't know anyone…might be nice."

"Oh, all right," Anna Marie sighed. "But I'm pickin' the restaurant."

"Your wish is my command, _cherie."_

* * *

**Back on the Acivian Research Vessel**

"_Again?" _Girad spat. "I thought you said you were going to make these observational trials more random!"

"Don't be upset if _my _hypothesis is proven and yours is not," Kaia replied, smiling. "The goal was not to prevent them from finding each other, you know."

"You included their colleagues in the stimulation," Girad protested. "That introduces a bias factor that wasn't supposed to be-"

"Which one of us was tasked with creating the stimulations, Girad?"

"Well, you, but-"

"And which one of us is a psychologist, Girad?"

Girad sighed. "You, of course."

Kaia gave him a knowing look. "If I say that introducing their colleagues, or allowing them to be placed in a contained environment together, is acceptable, it clearly is."

"Can you at least make the next one more random?" Girad whined.

"Stop whining and I'll think about it." Kaia glanced at the peacefully-anesthetized test subjects. "I'm going to get food and if you let them wake up again, you're going out the airlock."

Girad feigned shock. "You would _never!" _

"Correct, but it gets my point across."

He skittered away like a scared rodent. At least for the moment, Kaia could be sure that he wouldn't meddle too much...

But tomorrow was another matter.


	4. Day 3: Smooth Sailing

**Summary: Day 3: what are the odds of two individuals in a confined space with ~3,000 other people meeting? Kaia and company decide that the only way to find out is to throw our hero and heroine in a spring break cruise AU...**

**Notes: There is a 99% chance that I got both Kitty's and Jubilee's characterization completely wrong, and for that I apologize. Other than that, I *LOVE* this AU. Not my execution of it, but the idea? OBSESSED. (Add "X-Men on a cruise" to the list of full-length X-Men AUs I want to write after doing snippets of them for this fic...) I hope you are too. **

**P.S. yes, people actually go to cruise ship karaoke just to see how bad everyone's singing is. **

**P.P.S. sorry for the long wait - I wasn't sure if I was going to continue this or not, so I took a few days off to decide.**

* * *

**Day 3**

**Onboard the Acivian Laboratory Ship **

"You'll be happy to know that I've revised my next simulation to meet your demands," Kaia said, glancing at Girad with a tight-lipped expression. "This scenario doesn't place them in a position in which their meeting is inevitable. They're in a contained environment together, yes, but they are two of three thousand people. If your theory is to be correct, there's a decent chance they'll never even encounter each other."

"As it should be," Girad replied, trying and failing not to look smug. "I expect a marked change in our results after this trial."

"Skeptical, aren't we?" Kaia raised her eyebrows. "Call me criminal, but I'm rooting for them. I rather hope this soulmates idea has some empirical merit. Prepare the simulation, please."

Girad muttered something about Kaia's need to extract her brain from the rainwater-catching apparatus that he'd doubtless heard from a Terran and hopelessly mangled, but complied.

**Virtual Reality: a cruise ship, somewhere near the coast of Central America**

Anna Marie couldn't help but stretch her arms out blissfully as she stepped out of sliding glass doors leading from the cruise ship's dinner buffet to the pool deck. After an upstate New York winter, the warmth of the spring evening was absolutely blissful – even the stifling humidity was a welcome change, no matter what it did to her hair. It was simply perfect.

For the first day of the cruise, she could barely process the change from her daily routine. Two weeks free of lectures and papers, all the food she could eat, and the promise of adventure in dozens of cities en route to the Panama Canal? It was almost more than her fried brain (or her bank account – she'd eaten ramen for three years to save up for this) could handle. Sure, the suite she was staying in – and the friends she shared it with – were similar to those she'd left behind at school, but she was determined to ignore the cramped quarters and roommate squabbles.

"You guys got any plans for the rest of tonight?" her roommate Jubilee asked, already yawning. "Nah, forget I asked that. I already know I'm gonna be at the pool."

"Bo-ring," Anna Marie replied. "'sides, how can you even _think_about swimming right now? We just gorged ourselves."

"'Going to the pool' means 'sitting around in the hot tub,' Anna," Jubilee said, rolling her eyes as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Might swim later, but…not _all night. _Who even does that?"

"I was going to catch up on my-" Kitty, the pair's other roommate started.

"_No!" _Anna and Jubilee replied in perfect unison.

"What did I tell you about classwork on vacation?" Anna chided.

"Yeah, we _told _you not to bring your laptop. _Did you bring your laptop_?" Jubilee looked utterly betrayed.

"I was going to say that I was going to catch up on all the chick-lit I've been hoarding to read when I got a break," Kitty muttered. "_So_judgmental."

"Oh, then you're fine. Wanna catch up on that reading in the hot tub with me?" Jubilee asked. Kitty's blank expression was answer enough.

"The schedule says they're havin' karaoke in an hour or so. I was gonna check that out," Anna Marie said. "But y'all do whatever."

"You want to sing in front of people?" Kitty didn't bother concealing her surprise.

"I'd _pay _to see that," Jubilee agreed.

Rogue looked genuinely amused at the idea. "You kidding? Not in a million years. But," she said deviously, "I like to go see how bad the people who _do _want to sing in front'a an audience are."

"Okay, yeah, that surprises me less," Kitty said. "Now that you mention it, I might drop by that for a while. Can't be holed up in the cabin the _whole _night."

"I'm in if she is," Jubilee said. "Plus…there might be cute guys."

"Not the point," Kitty sighed. "Honestly, Jubilee, get your head out of the gutter."

"Nope, but it's an added bonus." Jubilee shrugged. "So I'll go. Why not?"

Kitty seemed to regret the decision to join her roommates when she found herself in Anna Marie's iron grip, being dragged by the arm to the lounge where karaoke was being held half an hour early. Anna Marie took one look at her indignant expression and snorted. "This your first rodeo? We gotta get here early enough to get front-row seats before everything's gone," she told her. Kitty didn't look convinced; Jubilee, with her face buried in her phone, didn't even react.

"Unless I don't know you as well as I thought I did, this is _your '_first rodeo,' too."

"Touché, Kitty-Cat," Anna Marie sighed, "but I have a feelin' we're not going to regret it."

Kitty, ever-prepared, pulled a paperback from the leather backpack she wouldn't leave the cabin without. Before Jubilee or Anna Marie could even get in a word in about being social on vacation, her face was buried in the book with no hope of extraction until –

"Hel-l_ooooo, _cruisers!" a man in a distastefully-loud orange Hawaiian shirt shouted into a microphone. "You ready to get your karaoke on?"

Evidently, the man – whoever he was – was using the same script on a crowd of spring-breaking college students as he did on retirees every other week of the year. It didn't work; only the most inebriated people in the modest crowd responded at all. He kept trying: "now, I got any volunteers to go first?"

For a moment, no one said anything. The karaoke night seemed to have ground to a very premature halt when, out of nowhere, a man in a trench coat silently rose and strode towards the risers that served as a temporary stage with total self-assurance. His confidence made an immediate impression, judging by the whispers rippled through the room. Anna Marie rolled her eyes.

"Thinks he's so cool," she groused.

"_Hot_," Jubilee mumbled, almost in awe.

Kitty shook her head. "Too cocky. Not my type." She elbowed Jubilee in the side. "Or yours, I hope."

"No promises," Jubilee sighed, leaning back against the cushions with a dreamy expression. Kitty and Anna Marie exchanged a _not again _look.

"Evening, _Mesdames and messieurs," _the man began, his voice like caramel. The room seemed spellbound. The man whispered something to Orange Shirt, who nodded and loaded up the song he'd requested. "This one goes out to all the lovely _femmes _out there tonight."

"He's totally doing this to pick up girls," Kitty said, disgusted. "Sleaze."

"Agreed," Anna Marie mumbled; she knew she agreed but she couldn't keep her eyes off the man. His magnetism only increased as the song began; his voice had the same mellifluous tone when he sang as it had when he spoke. (Anna Marie chalked it up to "everything sounds better in French" and left it at that, trying to ignore the heat rising in her cheeks.)

"I don't even care that I have no idea what these words mean," Jubilee said dreamily. Anna Marie promptly shushed her, drawing a questioning look from Kitty that she quickly waved away. The three sat in pin-drop silence for the duration of the man's performance whether they wanted to or not; his charisma was undeniable, smarmy as he'd seemed when he spoke. As the song ended, he raised his eyes, meeting with the riotous cheering of what seemed like most of the room. (Anna Marie found the fact that she had to question whether or not their enthusiasm stemmed from their blood alcohol concentration was rather worrisome.)

"The name's Remy LeBeau," the man said. "Remember it." He stepped off the makeshift stage to even more cries and, to Anna Marie's horror, made his way straight to her couch. Seeing the corner next to her unoccupied, he sat.

"Uh, sir," Anna Marie stammered, "w-what are you-"

"I couldn't help but notice you from across the room," Remy said, leaning towards her. "I know I said that song was for _all _the ladies, but…I mostly just meant you."

"I don't even know you," she muttered, turning away. "But my friend-"

"Nah," Jubilee said, smirking. She may have been tickled, at first, if he noticed her, but _this _was even better. "This is my roomie, Anna. She's great. And she thinks your French is totally hot."

"I _never _said that!" Rogue protested through gritted teeth. "Cut it out, Jubilee!"

"Then why's your face so red?" Remy asked, playfully challenging.

"Because…you're very forward and I don't think I like it," she stammered, utterly at a loss for coherent words. "No matter how nice your voice is, or how chiseled your jaw-" Anna Marie's face blanched before blushing an even brighter shade of red. "Oh. I said that out loud, didn't I."

"Got some openings at the table they assigned me," he said smoothly. "Three, actually. Sure you'd get plenty of time to look at my 'chiseled jaw' 'f you and your friends had dinner with me tomorrow night."

"I find that coincidence hard to believe," Kitty said blankly.

"Nah, I'd just bribe the people at my table to sit somewhere else," Remy explained. "'sides, I hear it's some kind'a formal night."

"Ooh! I _told _you that packing my old prom dress was a good idea!" Jubilee squealed. "We'd love to. What time?"

"Tomorrow at seven-thirty," Remy said, getting up to go. "Lookin' forward to it."

"What, you're not gonna stick around to hear the drunk college kids try to sing?" Anna Marie blurted out before she could talk herself out of it. _What was with this man and his effect on her inhibitions? _

"Oh, so you want me to stay?" Remy asked, unable to hide his unabashed delight. "In that case, I'd be honored, _chere." _The three instinctively made space for him on their couch and he took a seat next to Anna Marie once again, casually slinging his arm around her shoulder.

She should have minded. Somehow she didn't. So they stayed.

**Back on the Acivian Laboratory Vessel **

"_No!" _Girad wailed. "Why are you _always _right?"

"Can I get that in writing?" Kaia asked with a smirk. "I trust you're satisfied with the randomness of that simulation."

"Well-"

"Oh, please, Girad," Kaia sighed. "There were hundreds of activities they both could have chosen to partake in on that ship. The fact that they happened to choose the same one is very strong evidence-"

"Just you wait, Kaia, just you wait."

"I will." Kaia smiled cryptically. "In the meantime, I think I'll make tomorrow's scenario a little more challenging. Can't have you negating all of our evidence."


	5. Day 4: Hallmarkable Coincidences

**Day 4: this is why you should never give aliens access to TV movies - you'll probably end up with a simulation somewhat like this over-the-top royal-and-commoner AU straight out of a Hallmark movie.**

**NOTES: My parents won't stop watching Hallmark movies and it seems like every other one is about an average American woman who falls in love with the prince of some small (fictional) European country. One day, I was walking by as they watched one, and my idiot brain decided that "what if Kaia had stumbled upon one of those in her research?" was a question it needed the answer to. It's obvious based on what I've said so far that Kaia has access to a lot of Terran media, so there's a decent chance she might've found one of these while watching movies/TV to get scenario ideas. I swapped the roles - this time Rogue's the princess and Gambit is the commoner - but eh, whatever. Same idea. **

**Hence, a Hallmark movie-style royalty AU was born. This is utterly shameless fluff and might kill a few of your brain cells, and Gambit's a little OOC here (I sort of ignored his cockiness) but I had so much fun with this, y'all have no idea. It's my favorite AU in this fic so far and I highly suspect it will be for a long time.**

* * *

**Day 4**

**Acivian Research Vessel **

"Honestly, Kaia, where do you get these ideas?" Girad groaned. "_Surely _Terran culture has created less brainless archetypes from which you could draw inspiration."

Kaia gave him a tight smile. "You'd be well-served to keep an open mind, Girad. I find these movies charming, 'brainless' as they may be. Besides, you _did _ask me to randomize the scenarios, and this one certainly gives them long odds of meeting."

"Yes, but you've made me watch enough of these movies for me to know that they _always _get together," Girad replied. "But I doubt I'll change your mind."

"I see your common sense has not entirely deserted you yet. Good." Kaia smiled. "Prepare the neural projector, please."

"I still think those movies kill brain cells, but fine," Girad sighed. "Let's see who's right after this one. Best four out of five?"

"I've already won that by default, Girad. The first three scenarios all backed up my hypothesis, not yours."

"Four out of six, then?"

"Girad. The projector."

**Virtual Reality: a palace in the fictional European principality of Wescogniva**

**(Actually a soundstage in Miami, but no one needs to know that) **

Anna Marie stifled a cough as a cloud of something red bloomed into the air in front of her. She brushed off the front of her pale pink linen sundress, hoping her mother wouldn't notice its dusty red coating and tried not to breathe in the pungent powder, but couldn't help but notice that it seemed to be made of-

"Chili powder?" Anna Marie wondered aloud. "What's that doing here?"

"My apologies, _madame_," a young man with a vaguely French-sounding accent said, rushing to corral the bottles of seasoning that had crashed from a large container when he'd evidently dropped it. On further inspection, Anna Marie could see that one such bottle had shattered, hence the spice-cloud. "It was a careless mistake and-"

"It's no bother, sugar," Anna Marie said soothingly, crouching to retrieve a bottle of turmeric that had fallen under an elegant settee. "We all have our clumsy moments." She handed the bottle to the man who'd dropped it and, as he reached out to take it from her, he finally looked up to meet her eyes.

And immediately froze.

"Y-your highness," he said, hurriedly straightening and visibly trying not to gape like a fish. "I am terribly sorry to have inconvenienced you-"

"I _said _not to worry 'bout it, sugar," Anna reassured him. "And please, no titles. Call me Anna Marie."

"Of course, Princess-"

"It's Anna Marie. And you are?"

"Just one of the kitchen staff," he told her. "Nobody important."

"You got a name, sugar?"

"Oh, right. Remy LeBeau. Uh...pleased to meet you."

Anna Marie giggled. "Awkward, this one. I like that. Where ya from?"

"I just finished culinary school in Paris," Remy told her proudly. "I'm honored to have been hired. Even if I probably won't be for long, what with..." he gestured to the spices haphazardly stacked back into the powder-coated box, and the chili powder decorating every surface of the room. "That."

"Nonsense," Anna Marie said. "I'll make sure Chef Summers keeps you around as long as you want to be here."

"You know the staff by name?" Remy looked genuinely impressed.

"No, not everyone," Anna Marie admitted, seemingly almost ashamed. "But yes, I...do make an effort. They deserve no less. And don't you worry about the mess - I'll call someone in right away."

Remy nodded, at a loss for words. He picked up his box of spices, gave the Princess a smile as starstruck as it was polite, and left.

"Remy," Anna Marie mumbled to herself. She'd remember that name.

* * *

**Still Wescogniva - several days later**

**Anna Marie's bedroom**

"Anna, darling, it's time for you to recognize that you need to focus on the task at hand," Queen Raven sighed, fanning herself. "You're supposed to be gaining experience in diplomacy and legislation, not attempting to learn Indonesian-"

"It's the fifth-most-spoken language in the world! How's that anything but useful for international relations?" Anna protested.

Her mother was unimpressed with that argument. "Perhaps, but it is certainly not your priority at the moment. Nor is reading those trashy romance novels you won't stop purchasing-"

"Reading is an excellent habit," Anna Marie contended.

"Or your entirely inappropriate volunteer work with the Avian Conservancy."

"If I'm going to be a world leader, I have to do my part to protect the environment!"

"You do that by signing legislation into effect, not leading bird-watching hikes for senior citizens," the Queen sighed. "Anna, you need to _focus. _Your father's health is declining and I fear you may be forced to use the skills you're learning sooner than either of us had hoped. For the moment, you should be shadowing him, and it would certainly not hurt if you were to consider one of the many eligible bachelors-"

"Mama, you _know _how I feel about this," Anna Marie said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I can quit some hobbies and I get why I need to learn politics, but _arranged marriage? _ You can't possibly think I'd-"

"You are to dine with the Earl of Dunneret tomorrow night, and I expect a promising result."

"But Mama!"

The Queen shut Anna Marie's door behind her with a resounding _thwack _and she crumpled against her headboard, clutching a pillow to her chest. If only she could talk to someone...

But she knew that she couldn't, so she'd have to go with her second-best option. If she couldn't have a confidante, a nice bread pudding would do quite nicely.

* * *

**In the kitchens, half an hour later **

Anna Marie barely cared that she was wearing sweatpants and her hair was one snarl short of declaring a state of emergency when she padded into the kitchen on slippered feet, sniffling. The cooks - she knew most by name - immediately glanced up with warm smiles that dampened shortly when they saw her disheveled clothes and puffy eyes. Dodging a string of well-meaning "what's wrong, Your Highness?"-es, she made her way to the station she knew to be where the pastry was prepared.

"Evening, Princess," the pastry chef greeted her. "What-oh."

"Bread pudding?" she asked weakly. "Please?"

"Of course, dear. Remy!" she called another chef over. "Bread pudding, as fast as you can get it out."

"Princess!" Spice Boy (as Anna had begun to call the boy in the days since their meeting) trotted over, his eyes lighting up when he saw who he'd have the honor of cooking for. "Wait. What happened?"

Anna couldn't deny that she was happy to see Remy; it was strange, given that they'd only met once, but he seemed accessible and friendly, and she needed someone like that right now. "My mother's trying to find me a husband," she admitted. "Cliché, isn't it? But...she's setting up dinners and meetings with potential suitors all over the place, and nothing I say's going to stop her."

"Not interested in looking for love?" Remy asked. His expression - open and sympathetic - made her trust him all the more. If she'd been inclined to be honest with herself, she might even have admitted that it made her heart melt a little.

"Oh, no, I'd be fine with it, if it were actually love I was looking for," Anna sighed. "But it's not. It's a political advantage I'm supposed to get out of this. Classic princess problem, huh?"

"Very," Remy agreed solemnly, before cracking a good-natured smile. "Well, I know you asked me for bread pudding, but I know just the thing for a down-and-out princess. Ever had a beignet?"

Anna Marie shook her head. "A what?"

"Oh, you're in for a treat," Remy told her. "A little something from my childhood in New Orleans. You'll love it."

"I'm sure I will," Anna agreed, allowing a tiny smile to creep across her features. "Mind if I stay down here, long as I don't get in your way?"

"Of course not." If anything, he looked absolutely delighted. "But may I ask why Your Absolute Royal Eminence-"

"Really?" Anna said flatly, inwardly pleased that he'd remembered her dislike of titles clearly enough to know that it would annoy her.

"Sorry. May I ask why _Anna Marie, _the _princess, _wants to hang around the kitchens with the likes of me?"

"Need someone to talk to." Remy pulled out a stool at his workstation and offered it to her; she accepted and leaned her elbow against a wooden cutting board. "And...I might get roped into another boring diplomatic meeting if I don't stay."

"Can't have that."

Anna watched him work with a tingling sensation she couldn't quite placed and felt relieved, in the moment, that she had nowhere else to be.

* * *

**Two Days Later - same place**

Anna Marie's visits to the kitchens had grown all the more frequent in the last several days; the staff simply exchanged knowing looks when she burst through the doors with the kind of effervescent energy she'd rarely shown since childhood. Most thought she and the earnest Cajun chef whose station she spent _far_ too much time crowding were an endearing couple; comments of "pity it can't be" or "poor boy, setting himself up for heartbreak" weren't uncommon. Anna and Remy, existing in their own little bubble, never heard them. He tried teaching her to make beignets, enjoyed the company of a fellow French speaker (languages were a particular gift of hers, it seemed), and tried not to notice how beautiful she was when she wasn't miserable. She showered him with the kind of attention she _thought _she showed all staff members but was, with him, different; he was her escape. The Earl of Dunneret came and went, then the Duke of Larkshire, but her charming pastry chef was always where she knew he'd be, waiting with a plate of beignets and a listening ear.

Quite simply, he was utterly enamored of him, and he of her.

"My birthday's coming up," Anna mentioned on one of her frequent kitchen visits. "Mother's hosting a gala. You know the kind."

"I know. We've already started to prepare the food," Remy said. "It's going to be hectic around here for a while."

"You should come find me if you can get away for a minute. After all the beignets, I figure I owe you a dance," Anna teased.

"Don't tempt me, _chere_," Remy countered, grinning. "Your _maman_ wouldn't like that, would she?"

"Not one bit. Part of why I want to," Anna said deviously. "But really. I'm serious."

Remy said nothing in reply. Very few of his possible responses would've been...appropriate.

* * *

**The Night of the Gala **

**The same palace, but the ballroom now! **

Anna nervously smoothed the skirt of her emerald-green ballgown, checking her appearance one last time before her grand entrance. A stray curl had slipped from her chignon, and she pushed it behind her ear, trying not to imagine that the hand pushing it gently from her cheek was Remy's. (She chased that thought from her mind in a heartbeat; if she let her mind linger on it, it would be noticeable, and her mother would go into apoplexy.)

"Ready, darling?" the Queen asked. "You look spectacular. The Earl of Dunneret is going to be in _raptures-"_

"We wouldn't want that, now, would we?" Anna said wryly, ignoring her mother's disapproving glare as she took her arm. They walked to the stairwell to join her father, who took the arm not occupied by her mother and led them down into the ballroom. An announcer heralded their entrance, but no one seemed to care given the hush that fell over the room. Mouths dropped across the ballroom, but Anna's eyes sought out the refreshment tables instead.

She hadn't been wrong to glance towards that end of the room; Sous Chef Summers had to smack Remy with a pair of serving tongs to get him to snap out of his Anna-induced trance long enough to serve an old woman asking for a torte. "The Princess certainly looks lovely tonight," the woman remarked.

Remy made an incomprehensible sound that had probably been intended to be a word but didn't come out. He sounded strangled, so he promptly shut his mouth and served the guests in total silence until he could recover. (He doubted he ever could.) Twenty minutes and three dances into the gala, he was still rendered mute by every glance at the Princess. He watched her dance with countless unbearable aristocrats between guests until he could barely take it anymore; after the fourth dance, he retreated, stepping out onto a balcony for some fresh air.

"I'm very grateful for whoever decided the waitstaff needed to wear tails tonight," a voice behind him piped up as he walked out onto one of the ballroom's many outdoor balconies. "Suits you."

Remy turned abruptly. "Anna Marie," he said, his tone almost reverent. "I know I'm not 'sposed to say this, but tonight...you're breathtaking, _chere. _More than breathtaking."

"Oh, stop it," Anna replied, glancing at the floor. "Thought any more about taking me up on that dance I promised you? Offer still stands."

"You weren't serious, were you?"

"Never been more serious in my life," Anna insisted. "I was hoping I could get you to dance this one with me. Got them to play my favorite Strauss waltz."

"Your favorite what?"

"Never mind. Still. It's my birthday, and I'm the Princess around here, so...I'm telling you that you've got to dance with me."

"Don't have to ask me twice," Remy said, taking her arm with a shuddery breath. _Breeeeeathe, Remy, _he told himself, to no avail, as he led her back into the ballroom. The orchestra struck up a stately waltz, and all he could do now was enjoy the moment. And somewhere in between the trying-not-to-screw-the-dance-up-epically portion of the song and the admiring-Anna-to-the-point-of-delirium section, Remy made up his mind.

Whatever forces conspired against them, he would find a way to overcome them. He had to. It was too late to surrender now that he knew love had a hold on him.

"Anna Marie?" he asked, hushed, brushing a stray curl behind her ear. A blush bloomed in Anna's cheeks at the touch.

"Yes?"

"I think I'm in love with you."

"Good," Anna said, lacing an arm around his neck. The rest of the dancers kept spinning around them but the two halted in the middle of the floor.

No disapproving stare could tear her from him now. So she leaned in and kissed him for all the world to see.

There was no Earl of Dunneret, no obligations, no irate mother in that moment - only Remy and Anna, knowing e_xactly _what they had to do.

* * *

**Back in Reality **

**Acivian Research Vessel**

"You are an _incurable _sap!" Girad groaned. "Really, Kaia, you're a brilliant woman, but _this _is just...just..."

"Perfectly romantic and, oh, right, _conducive to furthering my hypothesis," _Kaia said, smirking. "Speak for yourself, Girad. I thought it was sweet."

"And I think this thing is rigged."

"We have this same argument after every test, Girad," Kaia sighed. "This isn't a contest to see who's right and who isn't - it's a scientific trial. Please get that through your head now."

"Eventually," he said. "But today is not that day."


	6. Day 5: Monologues and Other Bad Ideas

**Day 5: **Kaia's latest scenario has our favorite X-Couple taking on that most hated of human creations: the group project.

**Notes: ****YOU KNEW THIS WAS COMING. C'mon, you HAD to have been expecting this - "coffee shop" and "high school" are probably the two most popular themed AUs out there, so naturally, they both had to make appearances. I was super tempted to write this as the kind of tutor/student scenario I wrote about in a beloved (by me, that is) GOTG high school AU, but after realizing how infuriating Gambit would be to have in a project group, I just *had* to put them in a group project situation. It feels good to get back to good old enemies-to-lovers after the saccharine fluff that was Day 4, anyway :p. I hope you guys are liking this so far!**

* * *

**Day 5**

**Reality - Acivian Research Vessel **

"I've given up on trying to please you," Kaia announced as she entered the laboratory. Her impeccably-pressed coat was as sharp as her tone. "No more 'random' simulations. I will place the subjects in the scenarios of my choosing, regardless of your..._commentary." _

To her surprise, Girad merely shrugged. "Sure."

"Really?" Kaia couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at that. "Since when are you so compliant?"

Girad said nothing, silently preparing the neural projector. Shaking her head in confusion, Kaia pressed "play."

* * *

**Virtual Reality: a high school - Atlanta, Georgia**

Anna Marie raised her hand the moment - yes, the precise _moment - _that she walked into the classroom and took her seat. Remy rolled his eyes, knowing where this was going - in truth, he'd known since he glanced at the board and saw his own name next to hers on the whiteboard under "Group 3."

"Yes, Anna Marie?" Ms. Munroe, her British Literature teacher, asked.

"Ms. Munroe, is it possible that I could be assigned to a different project group?" she asked, painting on her best pleading expression.

"No," the teacher told her flatly. "I've chosen groups to push their members in advantageous ways, and I think you'll find that you have a lot to learn from your group."

Anna Marie wanted to protest, but the teacher's pet in her caused her to bite her tongue. She shot Remy her dirtiest glare as she walked to her seat; he returned a smug smile. She grumbled something under her breath.

"Hey, Anna Marie, we got put together!" Piotr, a classmate Anna had spoken to a few times but didn't really know, called. Anna gave him a tight smile - he seemed nice enough, and she knew for a fact he'd be a better worker than Remy - but she didn't know him well enough to be truly happy that they'd been placed together. She glanced at the list, which she'd stopped reading the moment she'd seen Remy's name on it - _Anna Marie, Piotr, Remy, Betsy. _

"Thank _God," _Anna muttered, relieved to have a friend in her group - she and Betsy had been placed in four classes together their sophomore year and since become rather close. And she knew she'd do her share of the work.

"As you've probably seen, given how much you're all talking," Ms. Munroe announced, breaking up the class' many side-conversations, "I've assigned your groups for the Shakespeare presentation. And no, there will be _no _substitutions."

"Why'd we have to get Remy?" Anna Marie whined, leaning over to talk to Betsy, who'd slipped into her seat, unnoticed and two minutes late, while Ms. Munroe was distracted by the students who'd already arrived. "He isn't going to do _anything!" _

"Between you, me, and Piotr, we'll be fine," Betsy said in her 'please-take-an-entire-bottle-of-chill-pills' voice. "Besides, he has charisma, and we can definitely use someone like that in the presentation."

Anna Marie groaned. "I forgot we had to do that..."

"Yup." Betsey grinned sadistically. "We have to write a group paper analyzing our assigned play and then perform a scene from it."

"Kill me now," Anna Marie muttered. "_Acting?" _

"My favorite!" Remy crowed from his place several seats over. Anna Marie blushed, realizing he'd heard their entire exchange. "Don't worry, _chere, _I got this."

"Please tell me we're doing a play with a scene where a male character dies a horrible death," Anna Marie said, burying her face in her hands. "He better-"

"Sort of?" Betsy said. "Actually, yeah, there _is _a death - two, actually - but...oh, you are _not_ going to like this."

"I'm sorry, what?" Anna Marie blanched, wondering if this day could possibly get any worse. _What on earth is so bad that Betsy, the bluntest person I've ever met, can't even tell me what it is?_

"We got 'Romeo and Juliet.'"

Anna Marie's horrified expression said it all.

* * *

**Two Days Later**

**Anna Marie's house - still Atlanta **

Two days later, Anna Marie was _still _fairly certain that she would spontaneously combust before this project was finished. Three-fourths of their project group had been at her house, planning their analytical essay, for an hour, with no sign of Remy. Betsy and Piotr had spent at least half of the last hour trying to talk her down from her anger at Remy and panic at the snail-paced progress of their project. "We only need three body paragraphs of analysis, so if Remy doesn't show up, we can each do one and still be fine," Betsy said coolly. "Seriously, Anna. Please stop panicking."

"It isn't _fair!" _Anna Marie protested, clenching her fists.

"No, but we're not going to be able to get him to do his share of the work, so we might as well get to doing it ourselves," Piotr reasoned. "We already have an introduction, and any one of us could write a conclusion in five minutes once we have everything else done. We'll be okay."

"I guess," Anna Marie sighed. "If we use the next to hours well, we could have this paper done before we even leave."

"_That's_ what I'm talking about," Betsy said, relieved. "That would give us two more weeks to edit and practice the scene we're going to do."

"Not a love scene, _please," _Anna Marie begged, knowing there was a 50-50 chance she'd end up playing Juliet.

"I think we should do a scene without any female characters if we can because I can't act and I doubt you would want to," Betsy proposed. "Much as I hate to say it, Remy is our strongest actor, and it makes sense to use him." Piotr looked at the opposite wall, the guilt he thought he was hiding evident on his face.

"Okay, what are you getting at?" Anna Marie's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "I'm completely fine with not acting, but Remy's a _huge _liability. Sure, he can act, but what're the odds he goes to the trouble to actually learn his lines?"

"She already told him we'd only let him get away with not writing any of the essay if he did the Queen Mab speech," Piotr admitted. Betsy elbowed him - hard, given how he cringed - in the side. "By himself."

Anna Marie's jaw nearly came unhinged. "You...did..._what?!" _

"We knew he wouldn't do any of the work on the essay, so we foisted the second part on him," Betsy explained. "It made the most sense. I know you don't like him, but I've seen him do class presentations, and if anyone can pull off a killer monologue with no practice, it's Remy."

A good eighty percent of Anna Marie's brain did _not _want to accept the decision - she wanted to rail against the fact that they'd made it behind her back, protest that there was no way Remy would do his job, find _some _way to get the idea out of their heads. But...

Not having to act _was _a tempting prospect, and they were right - he'd never have done the essay anyway. She sighed. "Fine."

* * *

**Two Weeks Later**

**Back at the school, in the hallway before class - presentation day **

"Relax, _chere," _Remy said, attempting to massage Anna Marie's shoulders. She swatted his hands away. "I've got this, and you know you wrote a good essay."

"I'd feel a whole lot better if I had any confidence that you knew your lines," Anna Marie muttered.

"Trust me, I do." Remy leaned forwards, catching her eye with surprising earnestness. "I know you don't think much of me, but I want to prove to you that you should."

"But why?" the words came tumbling out before Anna Marie could stop them. "I'm not the type of person I've ever seen you hangin' around with. For all I know, you think I'm just a neurotic teacher's pet-"

"And wicked funny when you want to be," Remy cut her off. "You ever heard yourself when you're tryin' to be sassy?"

"I'm not sassy."

"Nah, you definitely are, _chere," _Remy insisted. "And confident and gorgeous-"

"Uh, _no. _This is _not _happening right now," Anna Marie said, pressing her hand to her forehead and hoping against hope that he'd see reason and quit hitting on her. "_Not. Happening." _

"What, you weren't aware that I liked you?"

"Wait, huh?" Anna Marie's head shot up. She'd been expecting this to be some sort of joke; the fact that it wasn't came as a shock. "You-"

"You thought I was just flirting with you like every other girl I talk to? Not this time." Remy grinned sheepishly. "I know it's never gonna happen, of course. You don't exactly like me and I know that. But...worth a shot, no?"

Anna could barely process his words. _What? _ The idea of Remy LeBeau, player extraordinare, liking _her..._it was insane. Was _that _why he'd been so happy when they were put together for this project? It sounded ridiculous, but...he'd admitted it point-blank. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation talking, maybe it was the realization that he'd always been someone she paid more attention to than she should have given her professed distaste for him...but a crazy idea seized her mind. _No, _every rational part of her brain screamed. But she took a breath and let it out anyway.

"If we get an A on this project, I'll go to prom with you," she blurted out. "That's how little I trust you."

Remy's face broke out into an ear-to-ear grin. "Coming right up, _chere." _

It was then that Betsy decided to walk up. Noticing Anna Marie's red face and Remy's satisfied grin, she simply smirked. "He told you, I take it?"

Anna Marie's face only reddened more. "Oh, come on, did _everyone _know about this but me?"

"Pretty much," Piotr said as he joined their group. "Sorry, Anna. You're a little out of the loop." _Clearly, _Anna thought, knowing for a fact that she'd be distracted through all of the inevitably-stiff Shakespeare scenes her classmates would be performing.

She'd missed a lot in the last few weeks, but that assessment turned out to be spot-on. She wanted to focus as her friends Kitty and Kurt performed a painfully-awkward rendition of Benedick and Beatrice's confession of love from "Much Ado About Nothing," but all she could think about was how she'd never realized how spectacular Remy's facial structure was until today. (She wondered why, and spent a nice few minutes contemplating his cheekbones.) When she tried to pay attention to Laura Kinney's performance as Lady Macbeth, she found herself distracted by the unfairly attractive way his soft brown hair flopped over into his eyes like a 1990s heartthrob's. (It didn't make him any less of a nuisance, but it was devastatingly cute.) Every time Ms. Munroe asked the class for feedback on a group's performance, Anna Marie's mind wandered to his annoying-but-undeniable charisma and the way his voice sounded when he spoke French. (She couldn't deny that the way he casually skipped French into his conversations had always been attractive, even if she hated to admit it.) And, by the time she'd reached Jubilation Lee's melodramatic presentation of Cleopatra's death from "Antony and Cleopatra," she was all but completely zoned out, wondering what Remy could _possibly _see in her. (She'd spent three years openly disliking him, after all.) Betsy occasionally glanced over, noticing her glassy stare, and smirked.

"He's up next, lover-girl," she teased. Anna Marie searched her brain for a snappy retort but quickly gave up, settling for a glare as Remy walked to the front of the classroom.

"You're doing...the Queen Mab speech?" Ms. Munroe asked, consulting a clipboard. "Ambitious. I'm anxious to see what you've done with this piece."

Remy nodded and cleared his throat, his limbs loose and his expression relaxed as he dove into his monologue. "O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you," he started, pausing. His tone was light; Anna Marie nodded to herself approvingly, surprised that he'd managed to replicate the tone she'd seen in recordings of the scene so well. "She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes in shape no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomies over men's noses as they lie asleep; her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs, the cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; her traces, of the smallest spider web; her collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams; her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film; her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat, not half so big as a round little worm pricked from the lazy finger of a maid; her chariot is an empty hazelnut, made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers."

Anna found herself hanging on his words - and, from the looks of it, so did most of their classmates. He'd begun the speech with the whimsy it seemed to demand and his execution was truly impressive given his...minimalistic approach to preparation. He found Anna Marie's eyes and smiled - part of his performance, she was sure, and yet...just for her. He continued.

"And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; o'er courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies straight; o'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees; o'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream, which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are." The playful tone gradually waned as his voice rose in volume and intensity - _okay, call me impressed, _Anna Marie conceded. His delivery was exactly as it should be; she'd watched too many videos of this speech, biting her nails with the fear that Remy could never live up to its emotional highs and lows, not to know that. "Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, and then dreams he of smelling out a suit; and sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep, then dreams he of another benefice. Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, of healths five fathom deep; and then anon drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, and being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two and sleeps again."

_"WOW," _Betsy mouthed to Anna Marie. "_TOLD YOU." _

_"YUP," _Anna Marie mouthed back.

"This is that very Mab that plats the manes of horses in the night and bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, which once untangled much misfortune bodes," Remy continued, his voice picking up even more intensity as he neared the monologue's conclusion. The half-crazed look in his eyes was more convincing than Anna Marie had anticipated; she rather resented herself for being so invested in his performance, but she couldn't help but notice as goosebumps rose on her arms. "This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, that presses them and learns them first to bear, making them women of good carriage," Remy nearly shouted, almost panting with the exertion of maintaining the intensity of the conclusion. "This is she!"

A few moments of silence. And then...applause. _Actual _applause, not the polite golf-tournament clapping the other groups had received. Even Ms. Munroe looked shocked.

"Are you in the theater club?" she asked after a pause to regain her composure. "You should be."

"No, but thank you," Remy told her, uncharacteristically modest.

"Now, class, what do we have to say about that performance?" Ms. Munroe asked, attempting to snap the class out of its trancelike state. Remy slid back into his seat.

"I guess we're going to prom, Anna Marie," he said smugly. "Because _that_? _Guaranteed_ A."

"Did you do that _just _to get me to go out with you?"

"Partly..."

Anna Marie smacked his arm lightly. "I hope you can dance as well as you can act, _prom date."_

* * *

**Back to Reality **

**Acivian Research Vessel **

"Terran theater is weird," Girad concluded.

"Not if you learn to appreciate its subtleties," Kaia said, scribbling notes on the trial. "I appreciate your lack of complaints this time."

"Only because you wear me out," Girad sighed, feigning exhaustion. "I can't fight your flawed experimental designs forever."

Kaia smiled. "Of course not. Why do you think I let you get away with it for so long?"


	7. Day 6: Romy-n Holiday, or: One Short Day

**Day 6: nothing tests the mettle of a pair of so-called soulmates like a time limit, so the Acivian research team throws them for a loop with a one-day romance. ****OR: alone in an unfamiliar city after filming wraps on her latest blockbuster, acclaimed actress Anna Marie D'Ancanto asks a dashing local for directions and gets far more than she bargained for.**

**Notes: This is sort of a vaguely Roman Holiday-inspired scenario, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a Roman Holiday *AU*...that's part of its inspiration, but it diverges a lot from the plot of the film. Namely, Anna's an actress, not a princess (because she was already a princess in another chapter...yeah, that's most of the reason this isn't a straight RH AU, not going to lie), and she meets Remy by asking for directions rather than falling asleep in public; in addition, Remy has zero ulterior motive for tour-guiding her other than maybe "she's pretty and intriguing and I'd like to get to know her." But the whirlwind one-day romance remains...so I hope you enjoy this. (Warning you now, though, this is CHEESY AS HECK.)**

**Also: shoutout to thehazeofdusk for the prompt!**

* * *

**Day 6**

**Reality - Acivian Research Vessel **

Kaia didn't have much to say as she entered the lab that morning, but Girad couldn't help but eye the box of thin fibrous squares she carried into the room warily.

He even didn't have to ask to learn what they were for. "Humans excrete a saline fluid from their eyes in cases of emotional distress," she explained. "And they're in emotional distress so frequently that they've invented a convenient means of drying these secretions."

"This can't be good," Girad muttered.

"Behold. 'Kleenex,'" Kaia finished, holding up the box with a flourish. "I have a feeling we might need these."

* * *

**Virtual Reality **

**Seattle, Washington**

Remy could pick out tourists from locals based on a few simple criteria: whether they walked around with their faces buried in cameras, for one; their willingness to wait in a line around the block for a latte they could get almost anywhere else in the world at the first Starbucks, for another. But mostly he knew who lived in Seattle and who was passing through by the way they acted when it rained. Only tourists carried umbrellas.

So when he turned to face the woman who'd tapped his shoulder in the crush of people moving through a tent selling flowers at Pike Place Market, he knew the moment he spotted her green umbrella that she wasn't from around these parts.

On further inspection, she was a slight young woman with an expressive face currently expressing a mix of worry, awe, and confusion. (Remy couldn't help but note that her umbrella matched her eyes - the color looked much prettier set in her face than it did on the fabric hovering above the crowd at an awkward angle.) "Excuse me?" she asked.

"Yes?" Remy's interest was piqued. Tourists rarely approached him like this.

"I'm a little lost. Could you help me?" she asked, the picture of dewy-eyed innocence. (He wondered if she was acting but didn't ask.)

"Of course. Where were you headed?"

(Granted, his helpfulness was motivated far more by the fact that the woman asking was insanely gorgeous than by the goodness of his heart, but either way - happy to help.)

"Well, that's kind of my problem," she admitted. "I have no idea. I thought I'd explore on my own, but there's so much happening that I have no idea where to start. You got any ideas?"

"Most of my suggestions are food, so I hope you're-"

"Hungry? Always." The woman's expression became far livelier at that. "What have I just _got _to eat before I leave?"

"Hmm...it might be better if I _showed _you," Remy replied. "Are you up for a tour?"

"That sounds perfect," she said, flashing him a grateful smile. "But if we're going to be spending some time together, I should get your name. Which is..."

"Remy," he told her.

"I'm Anna," she replied. "Nice to meet you. And thanks, again."

"No problem. Now...how long are you willing to wait in line for the best macaroni you've ever tasted?"

Anna rolled her eyes. "Please. You underestimate my dedication to carbs if you think I'd mind a little bit of a wait for something like that."

Remy smirked - she had no idea. "We'll see about that."

* * *

**Half an Hour Later**

Anna tried not to show it, but she was shivering by the time they'd progressed far enough along in a line wrapping around the entire Beecher's Homemade Cheese storefront to step inside the building.

"You look cold," Remy commented, shucking off his windbreaker. "Here."

Anna's cheeks flushed slightly. "Oh, no, I couldn't-"

He draped the jacket around her shoulders before she could finish and her cheeks heated even more. "I wasn't kidding about that line," he said.

"This mac and cheese better live up to the hype," Anna said. "I've been freezing for thirty minutes."

"Yeah, you're _definitely _a tourist," Remy said, smirking. "Can't take a little rain?"

Anna glared at him. "I'm from Los Angeles, by way of Mississipi. I don't do cold."

"That's a long move. What brought you out here?"

"My job," she said shortly. "More opportunities on the West Coast."

"I'm from New Orleans, so I had to make sort of a similar move," Remy replied. "Not for work, though. I just...wanted a fresh start, I guess."

"I get that," Anna said, almost wistful. She pulled the windbreaker tighter around her shoulders. "Sometimes I wish I could run away from it all for a day."

"That what you're doing now?" he teased.

She looked more startled than he'd expected. "Of course not."

"Just teasing," he said, raising his hands.

"So what do you do here?" Anna asked, diverting the subject as far away from any details of her personal life as she could.

"Working on my Master's. And...maybe trying to see if I can make it in comedy on the side," he admitted. "It's a lot of work to juggle, but I like it. Keeps me on my toes."

"Comedy. Nice," Anna said appreciatively. "Performing anytime soon?"

"I wish. But no-"

"I CAN HELP THE NEXT GUEST!" a cashier shrieked, cutting off their exchange. Remy bought them each an order of macaroni and pointed Anna towards the free cheese samples sitting on the counter (which she readily snatched up), and took a moment to process the turn his day had taken.

Somehow he'd ended up as tour guide to a stranger - a lovely, vivacious, approachable, _female_ stranger, at that - and given her his jacket and waited in line for at least forty-five minutes to buy her food and he still had no idea who she was but he didn't know if he cared. Watching her snatch the paper container of pasta from the vendor when it was ready with childlike excitement, he could forget that he'd essentially agreed to share his day with a total stranger.

"Someone's excited," Remy teased, grabbing two forks.

"I haven't eaten anything like this in ages," Anna told him, her eyes sparkling. "This better be amazing."

"It will be," he assured her, digging in.

The look on her face when she took her first bite was oh-so-worth the wait.

* * *

**An Hour Later**

**Same Location**

Remy was, frankly, amazed at the amount of food Anna could pack into such a tiny body.

Since the macaroni, he'd taken her for cinnamon rolls (she'd downed one on her own) and piroshkies (she'd wondered where they'd been all her life); they'd gone for Greek yogurt at Ellenos and now she was slurping clam chowder from a bread bowl as if her life depended on it. Her stomach was clearly made of steel and her zest for life was more endearing than he cared to admit. He'd learned about her love of road trips and water sports, and her eccentric former roommate; she was regaled with stories of his upbringing in a massive adoptive family and about eight million pictures of his cats. Neither of them divulged anything of consequence, but they did share felt all the more special for that.

They'd clicked, somehow, those two strangers in a marketplace.

"Thanks for this," Anna told him, setting down her spoon to watch the ocean through the window in the cozy storefront they'd wandered into. "Really. I haven't done anything like this in ages."

"I haven't either," Remy said. "It's been fun."

"Definitely." Anna took another spoonful of chowder.

"I wish you weren't leaving so soon," he admitted before he could talk himself out of it.

An emotion he couldn't place flashed across Anna's face upon hearing those words. "Uh, I...do too," she stammered. "It's, uh...getting late, isn't it?"

"It's about five, I think. Mind if we make one more stop before we go?" Remy asked, confused as to what he'd done wrong. _Wrong thing to say, apparently._

"Oh...kay," Anna conceded reluctantly. "But I really should get back soon."

"Yeah, of course." She finished her chowder in silence, and they departed, Remy leading Anna back to the tent where they'd first met. The crowd had thinned as the day wore on, and now the picked-over rows of flowers were clearly visible. The endless array of blooms lined up along the back wall wasn't what it had been earlier, as vendors prepared to close, but Remy knew he could find what he wanted. While Anna was distracted by a seller whose selection of peonies was still rather impressive late in the day, he slipped off to a different vendor.

"These ones," he told the vendor, slipping him a bill and a bouquet of at least eight types of flowers he didn't recognize. The vendor nodded, wrapped the stems in turquoise paper, and handed them off; he approached Anna, still preoccupied with the peonies, and tapped her shoulder. She turned, and he pressed the flowers into her hands. "To remember today by," he told her.

Her face, always so expressive, turned bright pink; there was no mistaking that, or her grateful, slightly-overcome smile, for anything but the tentative affection he'd felt for her since - well, he wasn't quite sure when. Maybe the moment she'd laid eyes on Beecher's macaroni and her entire face had lit up. Maybe the moment he'd first seen her, tapping on his shoulder in a crowd of hundreds.

It seemed improbable, meeting someone and so suddenly wishing he'd never have to leave her side, but somehow he'd experienced just that.

"Thank you, Remy," she said, hushed, in the kind of voice that layered a simple phrase that could mean anything with a million unsaid words that meant _everything. _"I..." she trailed off.

It was in that lull that Remy leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers, and hoped against all logic and reason that he wasn't making a mistake. And it was in that lull that Anna draped her free arm around his neck and kissed him the way she'd never kissed the costars she was forced to lock lips with onscreen, or the high school boyfriends who'd blown out of her life like tumbleweeds years ago.

She kissed him the way she'd always imagined a soulmate deserved to be kissed, and it was the kind of momentary perfection that made leaving all the more sorrowful.

* * *

**Two Days Later**

Remy hadn't stopped seeing Anna's face in his head since she turned and stepped into the taxi at the end of that night, so when he woke up two days later to her face plastered across his notifications - something about a news article - he thought he was still dreaming.

But no, the five texts from various friends asking questions about the article they'd all evidently seen made it clear that he was very much awake. Blearily, he clicked the link, and his eyes widened.

Photographs of his day with Anna - some grainy and clearly snapped on smartphones, others obviously professional - peppered an article from a tabloid he'd never bothered to read, entitled "Rogue's Day Out: Actress Enjoys Day Off With Unknown Paramour".

_Acclaimed actress Anna Marie D'Ancanto - known more commonly by her stage name, Rogue - was sighted exploring Seattle's Pike Place Market with a man whose identity has yet to be confirmed..._

Remy groaned. _That _was why she'd been so reluctant to reveal her identity? Why she hadn't thought to tell the person she'd quite publicly made out with her last name, what she did for a living...anything?

He was too tired to process the insanity of the situation - maybe later he'd be angry, hurt, confused. He knew he'd never see her again now - not if _that _was who she was. He may not have recognized her, but thousands of others did, and...

Well, it was hopeless. He knew that now.

Remy fell back against his pillow and wallowed in his cloud of melancholy, their kiss replaying in his mind.

(He couldn't know that, hundreds of miles away, Anna had sobbed into a pillow for a good hour when her publicists confronted her about the article, or that she'd have done anything to find him again. Couldn't know, and probably never would. Such were the lives they lived.)

* * *

**Back in Reality **

**Acivian Research Vessel **

_"What?!" _Girad spat. "That's the end?"

"I suppose." Kaia shrugged.

"Not fair. _Not _fair," he insisted. "That had _no _emotional resolution, no _closure..._the _worst _kind of cliffhanger!"

Kaia smirked. "Now whose attachments are clouding their objectivity?"

Girad sniffed. Without a word, Kaia handed him a tissue.


	8. Day 7: All's Fair in Love and War

_**Day 8: the tragic-with-a-happy-ending WWI/Pandemic of 1918 AU no one asked for. **_

_**NOTES: this one is pretty heavy and I earnestly tried to do the subject matter justice - I hope I managed that, because I rather like how this came out. Huge thanks to Glowbug on AO3 for being the best sounding board I could ask for! **_

* * *

**Reality - Day 7**

**Acivian Research Vessel **

Kaia said nothing as she prepared the equipment - not even an order barked at Girad to do what she was currently doing herself.

He knew then to keep his mouth shut. They'd been ordered to encompass the whole of human experience in their simulations - separation and tragedy most of all. This must've been one of those days.

He hated them, and he knew Kaia did even moreso, but he couldn't protest. Neither of them could.

* * *

**Virtual Reality **

**Cape Hatteras, North Carolina - March 1918**

Remy wanted to photograph this moment and sear it into his brain for the rest of his life.

Anna sat on a blanket a few feet down the beach, its edges delicately fluttering upwards around her. She leaned back on her palms, watching the ocean intently, and he barely wanted to spoil the moment by approaching, but he did, and sat beside her soundlessly. She instinctively leaned her cheek against his shoulder and he wrapped his arm around her waist.

"'m glad you convinced me to take a vacation," Anna told him. "We both needed a few peaceful days before..."

She couldn't say it - she'd never been able to. It would force her to admit that he was leaving to an unknown fate and she simply couldn't stomach the gut-wrenching finality that saying the words aloud would bring. Remy knew that, and simply responded, "we did."

"I love it here," Anna said pointlessly. "It's so..._picturesque_. Look at that view - just like a postcard-"

"Anna." Remy gently cupped her chin and turned her to face him; she still wouldn't meet his eyes.

"What?" she asked him, pained.

"You're rambling. You only ramble when you don't want to think."

"So I don't. I'm sure you can imagine why," she snapped.

"Trust me, _chére, _I do. But...what if you had something else to think about? Somethin' good?"

She still wouldn't look up. "Like what?"

He dropped his hand from her face to take hers. "I've been thinkin'." He took in a sharp breath - that got Anna's attention. He seemed almost nervous. Remy was _never _nervous.

"And?"

"Over there, I'm gonna need a reason to keep goin'," Remy started, his breathing shallow and shaky. "A promise, somethin' that I gotta make it home for. Like...a wedding."

Anna's breath caught in her throat. "Remy, are you..."

"I know it's not proper. Haven't got a ring, or a speech, but...when I get home, what would ya say to gettin' married?"

Her expression shifted instantaneously and an impish smile crossed her features. "Nuh-uh, Cajun. You wanna marry me, you have to ask me good and proper."

"I don't have a ring, Anna," Remy sighed. "Can't change that."

Anna shook her head. "Don't care. I just want you to say the words." She glared. "_Properly." _

"Oh. That I can do." Relief flooded Remy's expression. "Uh, Anna Marie D'Ancanto," he said, pausing to clear his throat. "Will you marry me?"

She answered by smashing her lips into his as abruptly as she could, propriety totally disregarded (surely the disapproving old woman sitting a few yards down the beach could understand a young couple's need for a decent pre-war goodbye!).

"That a yes?" he asked, dazed.

"Yes. Yes. _Yes." _

He snatched her to his chest as if she would fly away on the breeze and held on tight. She'd normally protest - "it just isn't proper!" - but today she was all too willing to comply.

"I want you to promise me something," she piped up after a few silent moments.

"Mm?" he mumbled, loosening his grip to play with her hair absentmindedly.

"You're going to France, right?"

"Mm-hm."

"Get me a ring in Paris and bring it back to me."

"Your wish is my command, _ma colombe." _

* * *

**Several Months Later**

**New Orleans, Louisiana **

_May 18th, 1918_

_My Dearest Remy,_

_Are you in France yet? Remember to find me a ring._

_The Spanish flu reached New York a week ago. I'm terrified as always, but I must keep going, so in an endeavor to do something other than worry about your health, I decided to volunteer with the Red Cross. With some training, they'll make a nurse of me; it's dangerous work, and I cannot claim that I am not apprehensive, but it's better than doing nothing. I hope you're staying safe..._

Anna set down her pen with a sigh. Her words seemed so inadequate to describe the sheer panic that'd kept her awake night after night since Remy's letters began to mention outbreaks of a disease that spread like wildfire through the hordes of soldiers, packed into trenches and barracks like sardines. The newspapers hadn't reported anything like the devastation that her fiancé's letters described; she knew something was wrong, but nothing official was ever put out about it. She was in danger, the man she loved was more so, and she couldn't believe there was a thing she could do about it no matter what she told Remy about the Red Cross.

Blind, helpless worry - it had been her best friend lately.

She set down the paper and walked away, unsure whether she was going for a glass of water, a visit to a neighbor whose husband had also shipped out and in whom she'd confided frequently of late, or to cry helplessly on the floor of her parents' kitchen. Her feet would guide her when her mind couldn't.

**Paris, France**

_June 14th, 1918_

_Ma chérie - _

_Of course you've found a way to help - I expected as much. As much as I want to tell you to stay away from the disease and keep yourself safe, I'm proud of you. We've arrived in France by way of Saint-Nazaire and are shipping off to Nancy, in Lorraine, next week. I will try to slip off and get you that ring I promised you..._

"Letter to your girl?"

Remy looked up to see his commanding officer standing over him.

"Yes, sir," he croaked.

"Please, I'm not 'sir' off-duty. Call me Scott," he said. "I understand." He fished a paper square out of his pocket and held it out to him - a small photograph of a stately, smiling woman. "We all left someone behind."

"I asked her to marry me before I left," Remy found himself admitting. "But it wasn't too fancy. Didn't have a ring, so she asked me to get her one in Paris."

Scott smiled knowingly. "If it's what the lady wants, I'll make sure you get it."

Remy afforded him a small grin. "I'm gonna hold you to that."

He did.

Two days later, he walked out of a Paris jeweler with a near-empty wallet and a ring - a pale green diamond (maybe fake, but beautiful) set in delicate filigree on a silver band- hanging from a cord around his neck.

* * *

**July 1918**

**New Orleans, Louisiana **

Even after a few months of volunteer nursing, Anna still had to steel herself before she opened the doors of the hospital. The stench, the stifling heat, the groans of the dying - it was a nightmare come to life. But it was all she could do, so she still opened those doors every day, dressed in crisp white uniform, and reported for duty.

Whatever this disease was - whatever the newspapers weren't telling her - was terrifying, seizing not the very young and the elderly as it usually did, but her own peers - young men and women who could've been her schoolmates only a few short years ago, who could easily be _her._ Who easily could be her brother Kurt or her best friend Katherine or...Remy. She didn't want to - _wouldn't - _think about it. Usually. Sometimes, though, someone she met reminded her so keenly of a beloved fixture in her life that it was all she could do not to run from the room in terror.

Today, as she did most days, she made the rounds distributing water, swabbing burning-up foreheads with wet cloths, attending to whatever needs arose. The number of patients to attend to was dizzying, and the number of nurses attending to them far from adequate, but certain ones were forever burned into her brain.

She nearly went running when a young man whose name she never learned cried out for water in an accent so distinctively Cajun that she could no longer stop herself from seeing Remy's face in his. But she straightened her spine, shoved her thoughts back into their proper compartments, and moved on. These patients needed her.

(Later she'd hole up in her bedroom for hours because the memory of the man's voice and face and the realization that Remy could be in that man's place somewhere in France, suffering alone. Later, though. Now was the time for action.)

**Nancy, France **

Remy no longer needed a mirror to see the dark circles under his eyes or the haunted look they held. He could feel them, in the moments he was cognizant enough to be aware of his exhaustion or anything but pure, unadulterated terror. In the moments when the shelling let up and the world was quiet, he'd collapse against the trench's walls, eyes closed, and pull the leather cord from his shirt, rubbing the smooth band of Anna's engagement ring until it wore thin and the surface of its bright jewel was cloudy with his fingerprints because it was tangible, and real, and the only reminder he had of the good still left in the world.

Sometimes the men in his regiment would notice, but none of them said anything. Not all of them had left sweethearts behind, but without something to ground him, something to focus on aside from the brutality around them, every man among their ranks would lose his mind. There was no coping with some of what they saw - so they had places to retreat when they couldn't.

Anna was Remy's retreating-place - the memory of her voice, her smile, her lips against his - and he knew he couldn't let himself die before he had a chance to set eyes on her again.

* * *

**November 1918 **

**New Orleans**

The letters stopped coming after mid-October, and the flu kept raging, and Anna attended the funerals of endless cousins and schoolmates and family friends. And even when the war ended, not one single piece of her world felt like it was in its proper place by November.

Even in the weeks without a reply, Anna had writing. She told Remy of the minutiae of her nursing efforts - always avoiding the topic of the now-long-gone Cajun who'd given her the existential crisis of her life so many months ago - and detailed the exploits of his cats, which he'd entrusted to her care. She'd celebrated the end of the war, asked when he'd be coming home, wrote him as many cheerful anecdotes as she could muster, feeling as if, no matter what she endured at the hospital, what he had to see every day was worse.

But he had never replied.

After the end of the war, brain had developed a morbid habit in the months of waiting for a reply of envisioning the many ways in which Remy could have met an untimely end. He could have been hit by a shell or shrapnel or maybe his gas mask had malfunctioned or _maybe it was the flu - _

Anna knew she had to stop before she lost her mind. But she _couldn't. _She floated in a sea of premature deaths, and it was all she could think about.

By the end of the month, she'd stopped crying. Instead she numbly attended to her duties, shutting down to the world, determined in her work to spare some luckier woman the lot she'd been cast -

If her efforts could save even one person, maybe another wouldn't be stuck here, lost in a sea of loss, because she'd kept the one they loved alive.

The thought sustained her.

**Paris**

It was over. Had been for a while. But Remy hadn't known it - he couldn't, not in fever-induced delirium.

He awoke in a hospital with a woman in white leaning over him and groggily inquired as to where he was.

"You're safe now" was all the nurse would tell him. But others were more compliant. He learned that he'd fallen ill and been taken to Paris for lack of space in the field hospital at Nancy. He learned that he'd slept through the armistice that ended the war three days earlier. He tried to learn who in his regiment had survived and who had not, but no one quite knew who to ask (or couldn't - he was unsure which). He tried not to be haunted by the images in his mind of days that now lay behind him. He gripped Anna's ring, still solidly attached to the leather cord around his neck, as if his life depended on it.

And he woke the next day to a stack of unopened letters addressed in his beloved's hand on his bedside table.

He read each and every one as if he starved for their sustenance and, the moment he finished, asked rather emphatically for a pen and paper.

Anna might have no idea what had befallen him, and Remy was hell-bent on fixing that.

_November 14th, 1918_

_Ma colombe - _

_I have been ill. I don't know if anyone has informed you, but please, do not fear for my safety. I've been taken to Paris and am recovering well. _

_Right now there is little else to report, but I have received your letters. Knowing that I couldn't respond to them hurts me more than I can say. I am so incredibly proud of you, Anna. You are no doubt as terrified as I am, but you've forged ahead at great risk to yourself. Proof empirical that I have _excellent _taste in women. Je t'aime, Anna. Je t'aime de tout mon coeur._

_I'm merely sorry that I don't have more to say. It is the thought of coming home to you that drives me onwards. _

_P.S. I promised you a ring from Paris, and I am a man of my word. _

He slid the cord and ring into the envelope and sealed it, a weight lifting off of him.

Anna would know, in time, that she'd see him again.

* * *

**December 3, 1918 **

**New Orleans**

Anna made a practice of stopping by the mailbox on the way in after her work. She knew not to anticipate Remy's letters anymore, but she couldn't help but look anyway. Once the mailbox had been filled with more than empty hopes, after all; it was symbolic. So she reached into the mailbox and pulled out the usual random jumble of paper, riffling through the stack, reading each label.

She nearly dropped the stack - nearly dropped to her knees and wept, when she read _Remy LeBeau _on the return address of one of the envelopes.

Rushing to her room, Anna threw the door closed behind her, ignoring her parents' questions, and threw herself down on her bed. She tore open the envelope with wild impatience, smoothing the paper out on her knees.

She read with feverish excitement and moist eyes, wishing there was more to it but too ecstatic to truly care, and shook the envelope-

Out slipped a leather cord and a silver filigreed ring set with a pale diamond - its shade roughly matched her eyes - and her hands shook as she slipped it onto her ring finger.

All she could think to do was grab the nearest pillow and squeeze it to her chest. She felt her youth for the first time since Remy had received his draft notice. Why shouldn't she? The world was a mess, but he was coming home.

_He was coming home. _

* * *

**December 4, 1918 **

**New Orleans**

"Anna, get the door!"

Anna sat bolt upright on her bed, wondering who would possibly be calling at such a ridiculous hour. It was nearly eleven at night, and her mother was (clearly) still wide awake, but callers rarely came around at this hour. It had to have been an emergency - possibly flu-related - so she grabbed her protective flu mask and ran to the door. "Hello? " she asked, unlatching the door. She didn't even have to turn the knob to open the door.

It swung open practically of its own accord, and familiar arms wrapped around her before she even had a chance to see the face of the caller, and it _finally _hit Anna what was happening and the waterworks were opened.

Without even trying to stop herself, Anna began to sob into Remy's uniform jacket, and she could've sworn by the catch in his voice that he'd been crying too.

"_Ma colombe," _he said, choked-up.

"I thought you were _dead," _Anna sobbed. "I thought I'd never see you again, and...and..."

"Shh." He ran his fingers through her hair. "I'm here now, _chere." _

"I love you," Anna choked. "I love you, I love you, I _love you." _

He only squeezed her tighter before releasing her just enough to tip her face up to meet his and kissing her as if his life depended on it.

Because not too long ago, it had.

* * *

**Reality**

**Acivian Research Vessel**

"Are you okay?"

"What, why would you ask that?" Kaia snapped, blatantly averting her red-rimmed eyes from Girad's. "Yes, I'm _fine. _I was told to include tragic separations in my scenarios. This is...standard procedure."

Girad laid a hand on Kaia's shoulder. "It's all right if it isn't, you know."

He left before he could see the shock on her face.


	9. Day 8: to Carry a Torch

**Day 8: Anna's a hotshot young snowboarder, Remy's an ambitious up-and-coming ice dancer with a promising future but a partnership in shambles, and both are stuck for three weeks in the Olympic Village - what could possibly go wrong? (A Winter Olympics AU.)**

**Notes: This one is super fun for me to write because I've been a massive fan of anything and everything related to the Olympics since I was, I think, six. Ice Dancer!Remy is just about my favorite thing ever - I was a competitive figure skater for most of my childhood, and I met plenty of them as well as avidly following the sport, and I can confirm that the guy is a TOTAL ice dancer. He's showoffy and dramatic (ice dance is like a soap opera sometimes), and he would not mind a costume covered in sequins at all. ;) So...this one was fun, and I hope you like it too. **

**Also, the Winter Olympics are not scheduled to be held in Canada at any future date, but I invented a new location because I didn't want this to be confined to a specific year.**

* * *

**Reality **

**Day 8 - Acivian Research Vessel **

"_Please_ no more tragedy," Girad begged. "_Please." _

"Oh, of course not. I wouldn't do that to them two days in a row." Kaia fiddled with a piece of equipment. "Humans have an intriguing biennial athletic event I'd rather focus on."

"I took that terran anthropology class too, Kaia. I know what the Olympics is."

Kaia glared at him. "Well, aren't you just the expert?"

"Why'd you choose it?" he asked, diverting the subject.

She smiled at that. "Because each country's athletes live together for the duration of the event."

Girad visibly shared her enthusiasm for the idea. "You know, if one isn't considering, oh, I don't know, the _principles of scientific inquiry, _you're really quite brilliant."

Kaia's eyes widened mock-innocently. "Me, disregard scientific principles? I would _never!" _

"Please, Kaia. This experiment has largely devolved into a teenage shipper's fantasy."

She didn't know whether to be offended or flattered. "It isn't as if you're not _also _unhealthily attached to the fate of the test subjects. You cried more than I did when they were reunited yesterday."

Neither of them knew how to deny that, so they finished setting up the equipment and began.

* * *

**Virtual Reality **

**Toronto, Canada**

**The Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics**

Anna was pretty sure that her face would split if she kept smiling with the intensity that she had been for the past two hours, but she neither cared nor knew how to stop.

It was...well, _magical. _She'd dreamt of this moment - marching through a stadium with 200 other American delegates, surrounded by hundreds from the countries who had already marched - since she'd been old enough to realize what it meant. Every moment in the half-pipe or on the course had been leading to this. The applause was deafening, the air hung heavy with possibility, the pageantry of the ceremony was spellbinding - it was _perfect. _She couldn't have stopped smiling if she'd tried and by the halfway point, she was dancing to the generic Canadian pop playing in the background instead of walking. Anna had hardly looked at her teammates for fear of missing a single moment of the once-in-a-lifetime scene around her, but when she did, she couldn't help but notice that they seemed as enthralled as she did.

All of them. Jubilee, teenage figure skating phenom and unofficial adopted child of the entire team, was bouncing on her toes, waving enthusiastically at everyone she saw. The twins - Peter, a speedskater and the life of every party, and Wanda, a skip jumper no one much liked - were chattering to each other at the speed of light. Downhill skiiers Jean and Ororo, seasoned two-time Olympians collectively dubbed the "Ski Moms" by their greener teammates, couldn't contain their excitement even if it _was _their third opening ceremony. Even Logan, a hockey player she'd met once in an exchange that involved about two monosyllables and eight awkward pauses, seemed...mildly excited.

And then there were the exceptions.

Anna doubted Remy LeBeau and Bella Donna Boudreaux, the ice dancers who saw more tabloid action than the average B-list actress, actually paid attention to more than five seconds of the ceremony, as wrapped up as they were in...well, each other. They'd been lurking in the back the whole time, attempting to hide in clusters of people so they could make out without being broadcast on international television.

"Disgustin'," she muttered.

"Oh, _mood_," Jubilee piped up from beside her. "I've had to see a _lot _of them lately because we got a Grand Prix together, then we had Nationals. We had to do this photoshoot together and..._eugh." _She shuddered.

Anna patted her shoulder. "You poor, innocent child. Did they scar you for life?"

"Me, traumatize a child? _Non, _never!" a voice from behind them exclaimed. Anna startled and Jubilee's face went bright red.

"Hiiii, Remy," she said with excessive fake cheer. "Nice to see you..."

"Don' worry about it, _chere,_ I don't much like the PDA either," he said, turning to Anna. "Her idea, not mine."

Anna raised a wary eyebrow. "You sure about that?"

Remy chuckled. "Very. Can't figure out how to stop it, though."

She shook her head. "Isn't she your ice dance partner? I feel like that's something you shoulda figured out by now."

Remy shrugged. "Our coaches said the tension's good for our performance. We've got this tango that just don't look real without it. 'Sides..."

"Yeah?"

"It's best if she don't find out I've been carryin' a torch for someone else before we skate."

Anna gave him her best side-eye. "Did you actually just make a torch pun _at the_ _Olympics?"_

Remy grinned. "Might never get a chance to 'gain. Why not?"

He availed himself of their company to make his way back to his partner (rather roundaboutly), and left Anna and Jubilee exchanging confused looks.

"I dunno, man," Jubilee concluded.

Anna couldn't have agreed more.

* * *

**Week 2: the day of Half-Pipe semifinals **

Rogue's alarm blared loud and clear at 6 AM, but she didn't need it. She'd been so wired since the moment she qualified for the half-pipe snowboarding semifinals two days earlier that she'd barely been able to sleep. She'd tried to distract herself - it wasn't hard, when she'd met so many fascinating people - but talking to Team Britain (she'd met an English luger and a Scottish biathlete who were both entirely delightful) wasn't exactly conducive to the good night's sleep she knew she needed.

But there was nothing to be done about that now. She had to get prepped for the most important event of her career, so she shoved her hazy tiredness to the back of her mind and dragged herself out of bed.

Though she'd met hundreds of people in the past week, she hadn't made the acquaintance of many snowboarders, so most of the people she saw when she arrived at the half-pipe were either old competitors or total strangers. She'd always told herself it was better that way - she never had to compete against friends, and there were no distractions this way - but she wished, today of all days, that she had someone to talk to.

Anna glanced into the audience, wondering if she'd at least see a familiar face or two there. Sure enough, Jubilee and her roommate, an alpine skiier named Kitty, had shown up and apparently dragged along the Ski Moms, too. And two of the Team Britain girls she'd met, Betsey and Moira, were there (she waved and they returned the gesture, so she hoped they were there to see her); to her shock, _Remy _sat beside Jubilee, no Bella Donna in sight. She'd have to ask Jubilee about that development later.

But for now, the announcer signaled the beginning of the event, and it was time to get in the zone. She was the last competitor in the lineup, but she had some rituals to complete. So she pulled her lucky (scuffed, six-year-old, if-they-ever-break-it's-the-end-of-it-all) purple headphones over her ears, started up her competition playlist, and tried to forget everything but the music and the thought of the board under her feet.

Anna had used that playlist, those headphones, this ritual since she was sixteen and just starting to break onto the international scene. It was a time-worn tradition that had yet to do her wrong; she trusted it the way she trusted that her coach, well aware of this, would tap her shoulder to break her out of her trance when it was time to start getting ready. So when he did, she reluctantly slid off her headphones and made her way to the top of the halfpipe after the Australian snowboarder who'd been up second-to-last received her scores (she'd gone into eighth) finished.

The music was still playing in her head, as it always did. Autopilot - it was the best place to be. It made the time and the audience and the pressure melt away; she was simply...there, following the rhythm of movements she'd drilled into her muscle memory for months. Her body knew what to do; when, in moments like this, when her brain didn't get in its way, it always came through.

"That'll do it," her coach told her with a cursory embrace as soon as she finished. "Better than quarterfinals, definitely."

"Hope so," Anna said, glancing back out at the audience with a wave. She couldn't see her teammates' faces, but she hoped they were at least relieved, if not elated. (She couldn't ask for much more than patriotic support from most of them, but she wasn't bothered by it. Still slightly distracted, she trained her eyes on the screen where scores were being announced, not fully processing anything on it.

"Third! You're in the final," her coach crowed, and she could barely process what had happened before she was rushed off and immediately mobbed by a gaggle of teammates, all shouting their congratulations over each other.

All except one.

At the back of the group stood Remy, looking on almost sadly and not saying anything. She caught his eye and smiled - she didn't know him much beyond his unfortunate relationship with his ice dance partner, but from what she'd seen he was at least a little bit funny and interesting and she was glad he'd come. "Thanks," she mouthed. He smiled sheepishly.

That was the last she saw of him before the rest of her teammates reclaimed him and he ran off.

* * *

**Week Three: the night before the Free Dance (ice dance finals) **

Finals were over by the end of week two, fifth place grabbed, and Anna was free to experience everything she'd had to ignore in order to focus on her own event.

But she'd planned on exploring the city and attending her friends' events, not sitting on the roof of Team USA's Olympic Village house with Remy because he'd texted her at midnight that he couldn't sleep the night before the Free Dance (The finals of the ice dance event, he'd explained, which was split into a Short Dance and a Free Dance) and she just couldn't refuse, for reasons uncertain.

"I can't take this much longer," he groaned the moment she reached the roof. "Bella is makin' me crazy and I can't say anything."

Anna rolled her eyes. "You always say that, and yet y'all are makin' out almost every time I see ya."

"Not my idea!" Remy insisted. "I didn't ask for it. I just can't say anything without riskin' a bad performance-"

"Couldn't you skate with someone else?"

"The million-dollar question," Remy sighed. "Yes, but there aren't a lotta partnerless girls out there, 'specially not where I'm from, and Bella's hard to say no to."

"Soo...you're gonna date a girl you don't like indefinitely because you can't say no?"

"Oh, we're not technic'ly together," Remy told her.

"_What?"_

"It's_ complicated, _Anna_." _

"Well, that sucks for y'all," Anna cackled, enjoying the drama more than she caref to admit. "What about that other girl you like? You with her yet?"

"Huh? Oh, right. That." He grinned. "Yeah, about that. I didn't really know her at the time, I just thought she was someone I'd wanna her to know."

"And have you gotten to know her?"

"Definitely." Remy's grin widened. "I stand by my first impression. Even though she doesn't know I was hittin' on her."

"_Remy_!"

"What?" He shrugged. "You're a fascinatin' woman. And you seemed so...clear-headed. And carin', and practical...everything Bella ain't, really."

"Uh...can we talk about this _after_ you break up with her?"

Remy shrugged again. "Sure, why not?"

* * *

**Closing Ceremony**

The next time Anna saw Remy, he and Bella had silver medals around their necks and refuse to speak to each other.

"That's new," she told him as soon as he approached her. "Finally tell her you're sick'a her swamp-witch ways?"

"In a way," Remy said. "Wish I'd done it while I still had two weeks to live in the same house as you, though."

She smacked him.

"Okay, I deserved that," he muttered. "But...I hope we can see each other again. Sooner the better."

"Oh, of course," Anna agreed. "Still gotta lot of gettin'-to-know-you to do."

"Definitely," Remy said. "That is, if Bella don't feed you to a gator first."

"Oh, I can take her any day of the week," Anna teased. "I ain't worried."

"I'd pay to see that fight," Remy said, lacing his arm around her waist. "But for now...no one else needs to know who's carryin' torches around here."

"Again?"

"Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Anna!"

She simply sighed. "That's going to take getting used to."

* * *

**Reality **

**Day 8 - Acivian Research Vessel **

"You can't be in love with someone you just met, Kaia," Girad protested. "This is getting ridiculous."

"And you love it."

"Shut up."


	10. Day 9: Bleu Cheese

**Day 9: a regular old high school AU with an angsty twist.**

**Notes: This story didn't start off as a Romy fanfiction. It was (and still is, outside of this chapter) an original short story I wrote as a freshman in high school and have always had a special fondness for. When I realized how well it worked as a high school AU, I made some tweaks to the writing to make it more...Romy, and viola - ready-made fanfic. Is that cheating? Probably. But if it works, it works...**

**Let's hope this does.**

* * *

**Reality **

**Day 9: Acivian Research Vessel **

"High school?_ Again_?" Girad looked disgusted. "That theater project one was already one of the weakest scenarios we've run. Why would you-"

Kaia shushed him. "Don't question my methods, Girad."

"Oh, I'm questi-"

"And this is why you weren't assigned to anything _important," _Kaia snapped. "Really, Girad, _everything does not necessitate a snarky comment_."

There was none of the usual good humor in Kaia's voice, and Girad backed up a few steps in shock. "You don't mean that. You-"

Her withering glare made him question every interaction they'd ever have, analyze every conversation - had he _really _been that infuriating an assistant? Guilt rising in his throat, he bit his tongue and readied the equipment. His vitriol seemed to extend to the test subjects and he almost hoped she'd planned another tragedy for today.

It would fit the mood.

* * *

**Virtual Reality **

**A High School - Denver, Colorado**

Anna Marie did not, under usual circumstances, start conversations. But when she overheard a boy she vaguely recognized from her biology class ranting about bleu cheese, she allowed herself to make an exception. That was a conversation too relevant to her interests to pass up.

"I don't much like bleu cheese, either," she interjected shyly, hardly audible.

Still, Remy heard her. "Disgustin', isn't it?" He agreed.

"It makes the roof of my mouth throb." Anna Marie laughed softly, timidly, staring at her shoes. They smiled at each other with the mutual understanding of two strangers united by a common enemy (in this case, the noxious aforementioned cheese). And that was how, two weeks into ninth grade at Charles Xavier Memorial High School, Anna Marie met Remy.

And so he became one of approximately three people Anna Marie would speak to on a regular basis at school.

Freshman year came and went in a blur at some moments, dragged by painfully at others. Anna Marie still hardly spoke. Her English teacher wrote "Anna Marie is unnervingly quiet" on her progress report. Everyone noticed, though no one knew why, but Remy wouldn't have known it.

He became her most trusted confidante. She told him everything – things she didn't tell anyone but him, as far as he knew. About her crippling perfectionism, her tumultuous home life, her fear of opening up and still ending up alone.

(Why she told him that last one, he never knew, but it seemed right up there with medical conditions on the list of things that anyone but Anna Marie would consider too personal to share. He was glad she did, though; he wanted to know her, drawn as he was to her quiet charisma.)

He was wrong. She knew precisely what she was saying and how others might see it. But she'd been raised in a world of repressed emotions kept in sealed, corked bottles, and Remy was her escape from the airtight world of her youth. For the first time she could truly say anything without fear of it reaching someone who might not be pleased to hear it. She relished it – relished him – more than she could say.

And she'd never admit it, but once Anna Marie brought a salad with bleu cheese dressing for lunch just for an excuse to get mad, because getting mad with Remy was the most freeing thing she could imagine. He took nothing seriously and held nothing back; she'd never met someone quite like him before. Sure, his puns were terrible, and he tried far too hard to be suave, but...it was the most welcome escape she could imagine. Remy had none of the qualities that had made her life feel so small and shriveled.

She was lonely, and he came into her life at the precise moment when she most needed a warm, dynamic presence in her dull routine. He was aimlessly looking for something better to do with himself than the nothing he was currently doing, and she came into his life at the precise moment when he most needed a purpose. They fit together, Remy and Anna Marie. Opposites attracted, needs met.

Then came sophomore year, and with it improvements: a bit of confidence, a small measure more of that delicious freedom Anna Marie craved so much, and better class options, certainly. But for every improvement there was an equal and opposite decline in something else: Anna Marie's few friends began to drift away, her home life took at least four turns for the worse, and her classes? Those were worse, too. Especially chemistry.

(_Not that kind, _Anna Marie thought to herself more than once, blushing madly, when Remy noticed that they'd been placed in the same block of chem and announced - probably intentionally, knowing him - that "we've got chemistry" and she swore she'd nearly died.)

And English, with Ms. Grey and her journal entries. Their sophomore English teacher could only be described as mercurial, elated one moment and irate the next; the one steady, reliable thing about her was that she invariably asked her students to write a daily journal entry to turn in every class period.

Anna Marie's journal entries were mostly sad. Detailing her parents' latest fight. Lamenting that she'd never measure up to her siblings. Missing her childhood best friend, who'd drifted off. Wondering if she'd ever feel whole again. But one of them wasn't: "Bleu Cheese," the story of her first real high school friendship. Bleu Cheese was many things. It was a tribute to her best friend, a history lesson (for it'd shaped life as she knew it), and a passionate dithyramb about the many vices of bleu cheese. And maybe, if she were being totally honest, it was a love letter, too. Whatever it was, Ms. Grey adored it.

_"I know you're worried about being alone, but when you know someone like this, you never truly will be. Cherish that. Ask him to homecoming, maybe," _she wrote next to the A on Anna Marie's paper.

Anna Marie didn't really know what to make of that, but she showed it to Remy anyway because they were best friends (she hoped)and that was what best friends did. He looked a combination of touched, terrified and amused.

"You wrote about me?" He asked, pleasantly confused.

"I mean, you're basically my only friend and all my other entries were real depressin', so, yeah..." She trailed off.

"Ms. Grey's a riot. 'Ask'im to homecomin''? Why's she meddlin' in fifteen-year-olds' love lives now?" He cackled.

Anna Marie didn't respond. Whatever she could come up with to say to that would probably be highly incriminating. So she made up her mind: she didn't want to _like-_like Remy. And she didn't.

(Or, at least, she did a decent job convincing herself of it.)

Still, that didn't stop her from holding on like he was a life preserver on a sinking boat when things began to spiral at home and with her friends and that one time she got a B- on a math test. And she still signed his yearbook "I love you more than getting 100 on tests and messing up the grading curve – Anna Marie 3."

Then they were juniors. There was pre-calculus to contend with now. That and feelings Remy couldn't repress anymore.

_Why Anna Marie? _He'd ask himself over and over again. Anna Marie, who was too shy to make eye contact with most people and so quiet half the school had never heard her speak. Anna Marie, who had expounded at length to him about her isolation, her fear of ending up alone. Anna Marie, who hated bleu cheese and was looking like the frontrunner for valedictorian. Anna Marie, who was his best friend in the entire world.

There were a million reasons that loving Anna Marie was a horrible idea (the first of which, obviously, was that there was _absolutely no way _she felt the same way), but he couldn't exactly stop himself.

So he settled for a tactic that usually worked with Anna Marie: "don't make any sudden moves." She was so sensitive she could be startled half to death by a sudden movement and he didn't think love would be any different. And it didn't actually require him to do anything, which was advantageous; Anna Marie had undeniably grown – taller, more mature, even more breath-caught-in-throat stunning – over the summer, and the rest of the school was starting to sit up and take notice of what Remy had seen since the day he met her.

Sure, he had a good amount of seniority, but _still. _

But Anna Marie didn't notice. Still alternating between "relentless pining" and "in denial" in regards to her best friend, she remained oblivious to the attention of her male classmates. (That, and AP Biology required every ounce of focus and mental strength she possessed.) So they stayed the way they'd always been. Occasionally one of them would bring something with bleu cheese in it "by accident" and they'd laugh but that was the closest they ever got to dating. They broke test curves together, suffered through AP Bio and driver's ed, formed two-person study groups. Only ever growing closer, the two quickly became the subject of dating rumors.

Anna Marie, who normally spoke to almost no one, was asked "are you dating Remy?" More times than she could count in the two months following winter break and a million little comments and pointless asides and shared moments that the whole world seemed to notice.

She brushed it off lightly, but every accusation made her heart skip.

Then came senior year and college applications and calculus and the piano class Remy had talked her into taking with him for their mutually-unfilled arts requirement. Anna Marie spent the first semester as a walking federal disaster area. Her family was falling apart beyond what it usually did, college applications had her nerves in knots, and this semester was the one to make or break her chances at being valedictorian. It brought out a side of Anna Marie he'd never seen, practically vibrating with nervous energy, run-down, pale, worn to the bone, skittish with the relentless pounding of the year's inauspicious tides.

And on top of all that, injury was added to Remy's insult as Anna Marie began to be slightly less oblivious to the feelings of her crowd of admirers, never openly encouraging, but allowing them to attend to her, shyly sizing up her options. The day she accepted Cody Robbins' invitation to homecoming was one of the worst days of his life.

Anna Marie wasn't entirely sure what she was doing, but she needed something to set her rampaging mind at ease. Cody Robbins seemed like such a something, until he dumped her several weeks after homecoming on the grounds of her being "neurotic."

She'd never say her heart was breaking, but Remy couldn't help but notice that that was when she began to throw herself wholeheartedly into the very thing that had driven her into that ill-fated relationship. As much as she'd lost to it, everything she still possessed channeled into her schoolwork. Her already-pale face was nearly translucent for weeks. Her limbs were so frail he was afraid he'd snap them if he so much as tapped her, a consequence of meals forgotten in the profundity of the weight on her shoulders. Even tried-and-true bleu cheese salads had lost their effect on her.

Remy tried not to show it, but he knew that Anna Marie D'Ancanto was falling apart, tried not to accept that nothing could return the girl he loved to the way she used to be.

And that was how it went the rest of the year. Even graduation held no respite for her. She was, in every sense, a shell. And all Remy - who _always _had a plan, could always get out of scrapes, never let himself feel dejection if there was still time to find a way out - could do was helplessly watch as she faded to nothing and wait.

More than anything, he wanted to tell her everything he felt, help her carry her burdens in a way he couldn't if she kept on refusing to let him in. But he never found the courage or the justification. _It would be a waste to burden her with that when she's already carrying the weight of the world, _he reasoned. And so he waited. And waited. Until he came to his conclusion the night after graduation.

The last time he'd ever see his best friend.

Remy had spent four years waiting on the perfect time, but only once they had no time left did he realize that it would never come. Fighting through the pressing weight of the knowledge that he should've confessed years ago, he made up his mind. Nothing could happen now. Their time had passed, but Anna Marie deserved to know how loved she was.

Days later, they sat on the edge of the fountain in the park in which they'd spent so many hours in younger, freer days. Anna Marie glanced shyly out of the corner of her eyes, looking down, almost knowing what was coming.

"I regret a lotta things," Remy told her, "but the thing I regret mos' is that I never told you how I felt about you. So now I'm tryin'a fix that."

Anna Marie looked up ever so briefly, her face a muddle of taken-aback confusion. He'd remember that face forever – a few tendrils of the white streak in her hair slipping out of the French braid she'd always worn it in, shock coloring her features, a slight redness in her cheeks, the faintest of smiles, all cloaked in utter disbelief. He'd remember reaching out to brush those tendrils from her face. He'd always remember the last words he ever said to her.

"I know I waited too long t'tell you this, but...I love you, Anna Marie."

She'd reached out for his hand, but he couldn't take it. He couldn't bear it, staying on to hear her say what he'd always known: nothing was there, this had all been his doing, that all he was to her was a best friend. He couldn't face it, so he ran.

Anna Marie let the hand she'd extended drop into her lap as she watched him leave. She didn't call out.

"Aren't you gonna wait for me to say it back?" she mumbled, but no one but the wind heard her.

All along, they'd been holding those words in for fear of losing what they had when so much more could have been.

But today was one too late, and neither could do anything but imagine what might have been.

* * *

**Reality - Acivian Research Vessel**

"That was _not cool," _Girad whined, perhaps more offended by the simulation than he had been by Kaia's prior comment.

"It wasn't," she agreed. "Nor was my comment earlier. I apologize for...speaking hastily."

"Thanks."

"I'm not supposed to do this, but I think I could bend the rules a little today," Kaia sighed. "Don't turn the equipment off yet. Let it play for a few more hours."

* * *

**Back in Virtual Reality **

**A dorm at an unspecified university - two years later**

She walked into his thoughts sometimes, even two years later, and it is utter torment.

He didn't want to think about a French braid cascading down the slumped back of the girl who haunted his silences. Nor the familiar rustle of pages as she scanned a textbook page, lip curled in concentration. He wished he could forget about her timid smiles, the way she'd cry without a single sound, her unintentional wit. But those were the memories he seemed cursed to preserve in perfect detail, without a merciful wrinkle on their surfaces.

He found himself listening to a studying playlist (mostly classical) created by some random denizen of the internet who he would have very much like to sucker-punch in the moment because the first song that played, because _of course, _was Clair de Lune – her favorite music in the world. He pressed "skip" with alarming speed, but the melody lingered in his mind, and he couldn't fight off the tears pooling in his eyes.

_My Anna Marie._

A million forbidden memories flashed through his mind, and he gave up on his physics final, resting his head in his hands defeatedly. For a moment – one precious moment – he indulged himself. He hadn't done that since well before graduation. For a few minutes, Remy let his mind sketch out what might have been.

He lets the scenario begin on graduation day. In the alternate universe he created, he wouldn't wait until after it's over. This time, he would lead her to the table they ate lunch at almost every day for four straight years, take her by the hands, say what he should've said years ago. _I've spent years denying it, thinking it was what you wanted, but I need you to know that I am in love with you._

And this time, in the safety of Remy's mind, she wouldn't run from the reality of his feelings. Neither, in real life, has (to his knowledge, which may not be up-to-date) had their first kiss. That should've changed that day.

The following summer plays out like a montage in his mind. It is a snapshot of the life he yearns for, and in it they are falling, falling, always falling further and further into each other in a whirl of cheesy dates, donuts and gelato, road trips and deep conversations on the top of his car, looking up at the night sky. He would see her off to Yale at the end of the season with bittersweet longing and watch her car disappear, already counting down the moments until they meet again.

To others it would come off as overdone, but Remy liked to imagine that he'd meet Anna Marie at the airport with flowers and a tube of the sour cream and onion Pringles she loves. She'd run into his waiting arms as fast as her luggage-burdened self could move and it is then, with an impact that nearly knocks him off his feet, that he would know that he is home.

In his dreams, they would spend the blustery post-Christmas weeks on one of their sofas, covered in blankets, watching old movies, "conserving body heat," as Anna Marie would no doubt put it. This time, when they take leave of each other again, he would have hope, not just despair. They would meet again in time.

He extrapolates a future that will never be, imagines kissing Anna Marie triumphantly after she nails the dissertation for her biochemistry phD, years and years from today's slaving over first-year physics. That's the day they're finally free of higher education, bound to nothing but each other. She might take a job anywhere, but wherever she went, he would follow her, finding a nearby job opening by sheer luck. (In everything but romance, he usually managed to land on his feet.) He thought about sightseeing in their new city – Anna Marie staring awestruck at whatever sights it had to offer, him simply watching her because no sight could possibly be more beautiful or more worth seeing.

But real life beckoned again, and he flopped down backward on his tiny dorm-room bed, unable to shake the irrational feeling that this future with Anna Marie should have been his. But what was even the point of entertaining those impossible maybes? They'd missed their chance.

And he doubted the chance would ever come back around.

* * *

**Reality**

**Acivian Research Vessel **

"_Again?!" _

"I don't control these things, Girad," Kaia sighed, covertly snatching a tissue from the third box they'd used this week. "I'll keep it going until they do something at least marginally happy, but..."

"Yeah, they better. I'm sick of these...saline secretions." Girad wiped away a tear annoyedly. "_So _inconvenient."

* * *

**Virtual Reality**

**New Haven, Connecticut - same time**

Betsy's roommate had displayed a small metal picture frame on her nightstand for as long as she can remember, and sometimes, when her roommate was out, she looked at it.

It was of two teenagers, a boy and a girl, both wearing soaked Charles Xavier Memorial High School t-shirts. They were young, doubtfully any older than fifteen, and both were string-bean scrawny. The girl, her roommate, had braces and white-streaked hair pulled back in a single french braid. The boy, who she'd never seen before, was shorter than the girl, smiling self-assuredly. Each held a water balloon and the two were posed as if they were going to throw them at each other as soon as the camera turned off. Their contentment, it seemed, was unadulterated. In her three years at Yale, Betsy had studied the picture so much that she knew every detail by heart – from the disgruntled faculty member in the background to the roots of the tree behind the two poking above the ground.

She wondered about them sometimes, Anna Marie and the boy in the photo. Anna Marie was too shy to have told her much about her past, desperately as Betsy wanted to know, and she'd never mentioned this boy. But Betsy knew he had to be someone important. The way Anna Marie would gaze at the picture when she was supposed to be studying, eyes glassed over, head in a far-off place, made it obvious that he is.

One day, curiosity won out.

"I've always wondered about that picture," she casually said on a rare Saturday when they were both free and in their dorm at the same time.

"What picture?" Anna Marie asked, clearly reluctant to discuss the matter.

"The one on your nightstand. Who's the boy?"

"Oh," she mumbled, but Betsy knew she'd known from the start what she was asking about. "That's Remy. He's..." She trailed off. "Um. He's a...friend. From high school."

"Hmm?" Betsy asked, pretending to read the book propped open on her lap.

"My...best friend, actually." She stared at her hands, tracing the paisley pattern of her bedspread with her finger. "We haven't seen each other since graduation."

"Why not?" Betsy asked softly. _I knew he meant something._

"It's a long story," Anna Marie sighed.

Betsy tried a different approach. "What was he like?"

She smiled softly, staring at the lamp on her desk as if it is the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. "He was funny, and outgoing, and confident," she begins. "And sweet. Really sweet."

"As expected," Betsy couldn't help but say.

"And kind." She played with the hem of her sweater.

"Of course."

"And sensitive." Her cheeks began to redden slightly.

She didn't mention that it was obvious how this story had ended. "I know the type."

"He was one of the only people I really talked to in high school." She leaned back against her pillows, sighing. "And...I never saw him again."

"Why?"

Anna Marie didn't answer; she wrapped her arms around a pillow and squeezed it so tightly that it looked like it would burst at the seams any second.

Betsy had as good a guess as any as to the answer.

"Did you love him?"

Anna Marie's face blanched. "Um...I, uh. I...yeah, I did."

"Of course you did. He was your best friend."

"But...maybe more."

Betsy smiled knowingly.

"Did something go wrong at the end of high school? That why you never saw him again?"

Anna Marie nods. "Day after graduation."

"What happened?"

"Told me he loved me."

Betsy's eyebrows inched up several centimeters. "And this ended in disaster?"

Anna Marie didn't meet her gaze. "I know. It's a mess. _I _was a mess."

"All that history and you really never bothered to clear that up?"

She sighed. "No, not really." Anna Marie paused, unsure whether or not to go on. "I've never been one for dealing with my problems."

"It's never too late to start," Betsy replied, voice almost at a whisper.

Anna Marie rested her head on her knees. "Maybe," she said. "Maybe."

That night, pretending to be asleep, Betsy couldn't help but overhear a soft voice from the hallway.

"Um...hey, Remy."

And she smiled.

* * *

**Reality**

**Acivian Research Vessel**

"_Finally." _

"Tell me about it."


	11. Day 10: Digits

**Day 10: suffice to say it that the woman who gave Remy LeBeau the wrong number did him a solid without even realizing it - as he'll find out when he strikes up a conversation with the owner of the fake phone number. (A wrong number AU told entirely through text messages.)**

**This was almost called "The Space Between 'Sorry, Wrong Number' and 'I Love You'". **

**Yeah. **

**This one was a request from Glowbug. Thanks for the idea! Its format is SUPER different, but it was fun to write, even though it wounded me deeply to not punctuate the texts properly (and even then I used more commas to maintain some shred of dignity than any normal texter would ever use). **

**Also, I had to Google Gambit's old love interests (other than Bella) for this because I needed a woman who'd likely give him the wrong number, and settled on a (to my knowledge) relatively obscure character named Alexandra Davies. She's pretty much only mentioned once because I needed a name, but still. Thought I should disclose what I was talking about.**

Chapter Text

**Reality **

**Day 10 - Acivian Research Vessel **

"We only have four scenarios left to run," Kaia announced, entering the lab in an unusually chipper mood. "And some of them are going to have to be tragic because we went so heavy on the lighthearted ones early on, but this one's not."

"I don't understand why Terrans love depressing stories so much," Girad whined. "They're _exhausting." _

"Well, this one's not."

Girad nodded. "I hate how relieved that makes me."

Kaia smirked. "See? You get it now."

He simply glared.

**Virtual Reality **

**In the Innards of the Internet **

_(504)-888-1237: hey Alex ;) _

_(504)-936-1932: lemme guess, you met a girl at a bar? _

_(504)-888-1237: ...that's where we met, yes_

_(504)-936-1932: I think she gave you the wrong number...I'm not Alex _

_(504)-888-1237: AGAIN? UGH _

_(504)-936-1932: lol does this happen to you a lot? _

_(504)-888-1237: no comment _

_(504)-936-1932: well at least you shot your shot_

_(504)-888-1237: and now I'm talking to you ;) _

_(504)-936-1932: are you flirting with me? You don't even know my name..._

_(504)-888-1237: nah, just kidding, but what *is* your name? _

_(504)-936-1932: uh...you can call me Rogue _

_(504)-888-1237: nickname?_

_(504)-936-1932: you could say that _

_**(504)-936-1932 ("Rogue") added to contacts. **_

_Rogue: you got my name, what's yours? _

_(504)-888-1237: Gambit at your service _

_Rogue: nickname? _

_(504)-888-1237: you could say that ;) _

_**(504)-888-1237 ("Gambit") added to contacts. **_

_Gambit: do you like cats? _

_Rogue: uhhh, why?_

_Gambit: well if we're gonna talk, 90% of my texts are gonna be cat pictures_

_Rogue: I like em okay, I guess_

_Gambit: okay? OKAY?! _

_Rogue: what? I'm a dog person lol_

_Gambit: NOOOO...I thought I could trust you!_

_Rogue: ...I never said I'd mind cat pictures. _

_Gambit: all right! Get ready to be spammed :) _

_Rogue: ...what am I getting myself into? _

**The Next Day **

**The Interwebs **

_Rogue: how do you break up with someone? _

_Gambit: you're dating someone? _

_Rogue: why the surprise? _

_Gambit: I'm kidding but why do you ask me?_

_Rogue: idk, ig I just figured you were good at handling that stuff_

_Gambit: but why? _

_Rogue: this conversation is a result of you getting rejected so _

_Rogue: figured it probably happens a lot _

_Gambit: OW_

_Gambit: I'M WOUNDED_

_Rogue: but seriously _

_Gambit: um...say it isn't working out and be done with it? _

_Rouge: not sure how that's gonna work, but okaaaaay_

_Gambit: you wanna talk about it? _

_Rogue: remember that you're literally a random stranger? _

_Gambit: hey!_

_Gambit: but yeah, I get that_

_Rogue: well, wish me luck?_

_Gambit: luck 3_

_Rogue: slow down, we ain't at the heart-emoji stage yet! _

_Gambit: ..._

_Gambit: fine _

**Two Days Later**

_Rogue: we love breakups :))))) _

_Gambit: ironic smilies? _

_Rogue: obv_

_Rogue: I've eaten two quarts of Cherry Garcia today...this is tragic _

_Gambit: tragic? that sounds like a great time_

_Rogue: you have no filter omg_

_Gambit: okay yeah, that's fair_

_Gambit: do you need anything tho? Breaking up isn't fun :/_

_Rogue: why thank you...but no _

_Gambit: well ik we don't know each other too well but if you ever need anything, you have my number_

_Rouge: thanks, I really appreciate it _

_Gambit: ofc _

**The Next Day **

_Gambit: doing okay? _

_Rogue: better, thanks for checking in :) _

_Gambit: would some cat pictures help? _

_Rogue: yk what? that actually sounds kinda nice rn _

_Gambit: I THOUGHT YOU'D NEVER ASK _

_Rogue: technically I didn't tho _

_Gambit: but you didn't say no!_

**Two Days Later**

**In Line at Starbucks**

Anna couldn't help but grin as her phone dinged and her secret correspondent's name popped up on the screen.

She knew how reckless it was to strike up a friendship with a guy who'd gotten her number from a woman who hadn't wanted to give him her real one, but...still. He was a nice distraction -genuinely caring and amusingly low on judgement. _Iced coffee makes me want to throw things, _he'd said.

"Funny coincidence," she muttered to herself - she'd just ordered one. _I love it, _she texted back.

_Eww, _he replied. _You on your coffee run too? _

_Yup :), _she texted. _Can't live without it. _

Another message almost immediately popped up on her screen. A_ woman in front of me just ordered an iced macchiato and it's making me uncomfortable. _

_Dude, why do you care so much about other people's coffee orders? _She shook her head, somehow not the least bit concerned that that was what _she _had ordered.

_What do you get? _she asked.

_Three shots of espresso. The only valid coffee, _he replied. She was still smiling at her phone as she walked off in the direction of the pickup counter and didn't even notice that she'd veered into the line, where her shoulder collided with the man in front.

"Sorry!" she muttered, straightening up. The man just smiled.

"'s alright," he said, before announcing, "three shots of espresso!" to the barista.

Anna's eyes widened.

_He heard someone ask for my order, _and _he just ordered the thing Gambit said he would..._

"_Gambit?" _she asked, incredulous.

His eyes swiveled to meet hers. "What?"

"You're the guy I've been textin', aren't ya? You said you heard a woman order an iced macchiato - that's what _I _got. _And _you got three shots-"

"Of espresso," he finished, equally taken aback. "_Rogue?" _

"You're prettier thank I imagined you," she blurted out.

(What? A chiseled jawline_ did things_ to her brain.)

He smirked. "And you're even sweeter, _chere. _Rogue?"

"Anna," she told him. "Now that we've met."

"Remy," he replied. "Nice to finally meet ya. You know...in person."

"I can't believe you hate iced coffee. It's the _best." _

Remy laughed. "Hardly. You need to be anywhere soon?"

"It's Sunday, Remy."

"So? You might have places to be."

"Well, no, I don't. So yes, I accept."

"Didn't even have to ask." Remy grinned.

"'Course not. Wrong-number texts'll tell ya a lot about a person." She began to walk towards a window table and he followed; she smiled over her shoulder, knowing he would. "Oh, also."

"Yeah?" Remy took a swig of espresso.

"_Why _have you been hittin' on me since you found out I was available?"

"I haven't!"

"Hm." Anna smirked. "Right."

"I wouldn't flirt with someone I didn't know. But..."

Anna raised a teasing eyebrow. "Yes?"

"I know you now, don't I?"

**Back in Reality **

**Acivian Research Vessel**

"I can't believe you've actually made me _appreciate _disgusting flirting youths," Girad commented.

"Why do you think I put a war between them?" Kaia smiled. "And a herd of angry publicists, and then a crippling inability to be honest about their feelings?"

"Because your boss told you to..."

"Well, yes, but you get the point."

"Nice try, Andronis."

"_Right_."


	12. Day 11: Enemy of My Enemy

**Day 11: in which our intrepid lab rats are rival treasure hunters (okay, Remy's more of a looter, but will he ever admit to that?), pitted against each other when two different clients hire them to track down a lost Fabergé egg. (Some good old enemies-to-lovers ft. treasure hunting adventures, because I haven't written much of that, and that is a shame.)**

**This is a pretty bizarre AU. Fun, but bizarre. **

**Also! The story of the Necessairé Egg as referenced here is completely factual - it's still out there, guys! - but, obviously, I invented its location. No one actually knows where it is, although the part about it being said to be in England is true. **

**(However, my information about what happens after you're knocked out is most definitely NOT factual. Just wanted to put that out there - that's all Plot Convenience.) **

**I tried to do my homework, so here are some links I used to research if you want to find out more about the missing Fabrege Eggs, especially the Necessairé, which is the one they're hunting for in this chapter:  
a-new-clue-in-the-hunt-for-the-missing-faberge-necessaire-egg/**

** columns/the-hunt-continues-for-missing-faberge-eggs/article_ **

**(See the end of the chapter for ****more notes****.)**

**Reality**

**Acivian Research Vessel **

"These Terrans have a propensity for losing track of their valuables that makes my head spin." Girad looked up from the briefing document. "_Eight _of these things got lost? Why would anyone let anything worth so much money out of their sight?"

"Sometimes history gets in the way," Kaia said, smiling cryptically. "I love this simulation. Almost studied archaeology back at the Institute."

"And yet you ended up becoming a psychologist?"

"Because having to go outside for a living sounded like torture."

"Huh." Girad finished booting the neural projector. "Never would've guessed."

**Virtual Reality **

**Just outside of London, England**

Mysteries, legendary lost things, treasures that time forgot - those were the kinds of assignments Remy LeBeau had gone into the business of antiquities collection for. (Treasure hunting, if one was being literal, but "antiquities collection" had _such _a polished ring to it.)

So...tracking down a Fabergé egg? And one shrouded in mystery, at that? The thought brought a gleam to his eye.

Only the sparsest information about the egg's potential whereabouts was available: it had been sold to Wartski Jewelers, a prestigious English firm, by a scrap metal dealer in the 1950s; no one had realized what the "gold ornament" truly was until years later; and, by that point, it had been purchased by a buyer whose identity had never been disclosed. The firm hadn't even known they'd been in possession of a Fabregé egg until a concerned citizen found a photograph of the egg online and submitted a tip, confirming that the Necessairé - a bejeweled egg containing grooming implements made of diamond - had survived the Russian Revolution and was, with overwhelming likelihood, still in England. It was a story far too improbable to have been invented - the best kind. Finding it would still be a trial - "ask around" was the best idea he'd yet had, seeing as the egg was probably sitting, unsuspected, in someone's china cabinet.

Exactly he kind of challenge Remy thrived on, even though three days of door-to-door inquiry - "do you know anyone who owns unusual gold objects?" - had gotten him almost nowhere. Doors were typically slammed in his face at the question, which sounded undoubtedly suspicious regardless of the context. But, in a stroke of luck, one of the few people who hadn't immediately turned him out had referred him to a friend who'd inherited her grandfather's small but unusual collection of gold and silver a few years before. That was where he was headed now. He rung the doorbell with a jolt of excitement - this might be the closest anyone had (knowingly) been to the Necessairé in almost seventy years.

"Hello?" A soft-spoken woman of about his age poked her head out the door.

"Mornin'," Remy said with his most reassuring, I'm-perfectly-safe-to-let-into-your-house smile. "Mind if I ask you some questions about your gold collection?"

The woman's eyes narrowed. "You're the second person in two days to ask me that. What could you all possibly think I have?"

Honesty usually coaxed information from people in time. "It's not impossible that you've got a Fabergé egg."

Her eyes widened. "The Russian ones?"

"That's the kind."

"The Russian _worth-millions-of-dollars _kind?"

"Again, yes."

She gaped for a moment before regaining her composure. "And you think I have a Fabergé egg without knowing it?"

"I'm not sayin' that it's likely, but you might."

"And how'd you even know about my gold, anyway?" the suspicion that she might own a multi-million-dollar piece of art had heightened the woman's apprehension.

"I've been asking around about a missing egg that everyone says is still in England, and one of your friends told me about it." He conveniently didn't mention that he was merely working for a collector; that usually didn't come off well.

"Well, I already had another one of you egg-hunters around here, and she bought off at least half my gold, so I doubt I still have it even if I once did."

She shut the door and Remy sucked in a breath. To get this close, know this much, and have it all lead to nothing, and all because another collector had beaten him to the punch...

_Who else was looking for this egg? _

**Downtown London**

Anna swung open the door at Wartski Jewelers with an easy smile in spite of herself.

If this unknown woman's family heirloom collection held the treasure she suspected it did, its discovery could put her on the map. She'd be known the world over as the lucky (she preferred _insanely skilled, _but it all boiled down to luck in the end) finder of the missing Necessairé egg. She'd be interviewed and invited to speak at conferences and much would be made of her knack for finding the so-called "lost things" of the world-

"Good morning, madam," the receptionist greeted her. "Welcome to Wart-"

"IthinkImightafoundafabergéegg," she blurted out before she had a chance to put a cork in the stream of unintelligible words coming out of her mouth. _Nice, Anna. _She'd tried endlessly to develop the refinement that seemed to be expected in the antiquities industry, but it wasn't natural, and sometimes her rough-around-the-edges, overenthusiastic old self shone through.

"Come again?" the receptionist furrowed his brow suspiciously and Anna cringed - until she realized he wasn't looking at her.

Someone else had followed her in and stood silently behind her. He said nothing, and his height, graceful bearing, and long duster coat made for an intimidating picture.

"Welcome," the receptionist piped up after a few moments of silence. "I'll be with you in a moment. Ma'am-" he turned back to Anna, adjusting his glasses - "did I hear you correctly when you said that you might have a Fabergé egg?"

Anna gulped. _Great. _Now she had a witness.

"Yes, sir," she replied, nodding tightly. The man behind her sucked in a breath. "I recently spoke with a woman who inherited some gold from her grandparents, and there's somethin' a little bit like the Necessairé in it. She sold it to me and I want to have it authenticated."

"The Necessairé?" the receptionist visibly perked up at that.

Anna nodded. "The timing of it's right, and most people think that egg's still in England."

"I am well aware," the receptionist sighed. "I will have you in touch with someone who can authenticate your items momentarily. In the meantime, please take a seat." He cleared his throat. "Next?"

"I'm here 'bout the same egg she is," the man replied, gesturing in Anna's direction.

"You _both _think you have the Necessairé?"

"No, I just think she does, and this was the most likely place to find 'er."

Anna clutched the case she was carrying defensively.

"Then you may speak with her elsewhere. I must ask you to leave if you have no further cause to be here."

He complied, but Anna knew she hadn't seen the last of him. She'd have to be on guard.

"Checkmate," Anna told the mysterious man from the shop - still seated on a bench outside the store - as she walked past. "I've got it."

(She did _not _have it, but she'd made a pretty lump of cash selling the firm a few of the other implements the woman had sold her, and she could identify a fellow collector in her sleep. She needed to throw this man off her trail and if he knew she still didn't have it, he'd tail her. Couldn't have that. Maybe this way he'd give up.)

His eyes widened. "Who _are _you?"

"Name's Anna," she said, feigning confidence. "Antiquities and Valuables Collector. And you?"

"Remy. Same deal."

"You might wanna stop lurking. Doesn't look trustworthy," Anna advised him. "And you also might wanna quit while you're ahead."

Remy grinned. "Give up when the egg is this close? You crazy?"

"Fine, then," Anna said, with a devious grin of her own. "This is war, Remy. And I don't lose."

"Challenge accepted."

Remy hadn't expected a rival, but he wasn't concerned. He had a feeling Anna would play fair.

He wouldn't. Oh, how he _wouldn't,_ if it meant getting that egg and the insane sum his client had promised for its safe delivery. And, though he always pretended he'd gone straight - it looked good, presenting himself as a former thief with reformed intentions who'd retained his old skills (employers _drooled _over that pitch, somewhat unwisely) - some things couldn't be trained out of him. And this employer...well, he'd given him free reign to use _whatever tactics necessary _to get that egg. That was all Remy needed to hear.

And, as he popped the screen off of Anna's hotel room window, he was grateful for that. Her possession of the egg made this job easier, if anything - he didn't need to bother locating it now. She probably wasn't in her hotel room, so it was a simple in-and-out job - get the egg, get out. Easy. Except...

_"Get out of my room!" _

Remy nearly fell backwards out of the window he'd just climbed through. Suffice to say it he'd been banking on Anna being out of her room when he came for her egg, and she was very much _here, _and _very upset. _(He couldn't really blame her, but it was _quite _unfortunate.) No, there was no easy way out of this one...

"I know what this looks like, but I swear I'd never hurt you and I'm just here for the eg-"

He never saw her uppercut coming.

"'s what you get for tryin' to steal from me," she said serenely, as her would-be thief flew backwards into an armoire. "And I never _had _the egg, so have fun wakin' up in the clink for nothing."

Remy was clearly dazed, but he heard her, crystal-clear. "You..._what?" _

Anna smirked. "My employer's got eyes all over the place. Warned me there was another collector out for the egg, so naturally, I did my homework." She plucked an apple from the basket of pretty-but-probably-unappetizing fruit on her room's fancy TV cabinet and casually began to toss it. Remy's eyes instinctively followed its _up-down-up-down _movement. "And you, Remy Etienne LeBeau, ain't no collector."

That was too much for his already-wounded pride to bear. "Whaddaya mean? 'C_ourse _I'm a-"

"Grave robber." Anna fixed him with a hard glare. "Diggin' up pieces'a history, stealin' em for the highest bidder. Grave robber, an' a plain ol' thief - that's what you are."

"That offends me."

Anna chuckled. "'Course it does. Truth hurts, don't it? You're lucky I haven't called the cops on you yet. Or worse."

"Worse?"

"I know where you've been, LeBeau. Palmyra, Iraq, Yemen - you're all over the place, lootin' artifacts an' sellin' em."

"And this is relevant how?" Remy leaned against the dresser. He didn't deny it; clearly this woman knew too much, and clearly he needed to hear her out or there'd be hell to pay.

"If I don't get to it first, you're gonna steal this egg just like you stole everything else you've ever collected. And believe me, LeBeau, I got ways to do that. _Oh, have I got ways." _

"You still haven't explained that 'worse'n the cops' line."

"UNESCO. The British Museum. Heck, even the UN would probably be _thrilled _to catch a looter'a your caliber. They know my name and they trust it, so if I call in sayin' I've got Remy LeBeau tied up in my hotel room closet after he tried to steal a Fabergé egg from me...oh, sugah, do you have a nasty surprise in store." She smirked, utterly triumphant - she had him backed into a corner and she knew it.

"Nah. I always escape."

_Or not. _Anna still wasn't worried - she still had another bargaining chip. "Well, I'm still gonna need your help findin' this darn thing, and I have other ways to get it."

He raised an eyebrow. "If you're seducin' me-"

Anna's composed face immediately went bright red. "_No! _This is a _professional negotiation-" _

"Yup. All that blushin' sure is doin' a world'a good for the 'professional' image."

"_Anyway." _Anna cleared her throat and disappeared into the closet (presumably to open the safe) and emerged carrying a wooden case, which she handed to Remy. Though she trusted the man as far as she could throw him, she knew that she didn't need to tell him to handle it with the utmost caution. True to form, his eyes widened the moment he opened the lid.

"The Cherub with Chariot egg...where did you find this?"

"Girl's gotta have her secrets, don't she?" Anna said, twirling a lock of hair around her finger as she watched Remy inspect the egg. "Notice I never said that I didn't have _an _egg. Came across this before we even met the gal who didn't have the Necessairé, and I figured that one lost Fabergé's as good as the next."

"And how are you plannin' on using this to make me work for you?"

"The only language you speak," Anna announced. "Money."

"I also speak French, you know."

"Yeah, goin' back to what I originally said. Money."

"And English."

"But your native language is-"

"Among other things." (She blushed again. Both courteously pretended not to notice.)

"If you can actually help me find the Necessairé, I'm sellin' this to a museum collection, and I'll cut you a good 40% of the profit."

Remy perked up at that. "Wouldn't we get more money if-"

"_No." _

_"But why?" _

"These are precious symbols of Russian culture, Remy. They belong in-"

"A country where they represent the excesses of a rulin' class the people hated?" Remy wasn't impressed. "You're not the only one who did their homework."

"Hmph." Anna crossed her arms. "Regardless of what the meant _over a century ago, _they should be in Russia. In a museum. And that's where this one's gonna be. 'Sides, the Hermitage would pay an arm and a leg to get its hands on a lost Fabergé."

"I suppose." Remy shifted, uncomfortable but trying not to show it. "And how d'you think I'm gonna help you out?"

"Do your thing, you grave-robbin' sewer rat."

"So you mean..."

"Track people. Ask questions ya shouldn't. Find out what people don't want you to know." Anna took the case from him. "And when we find that egg, it's goin' to my employer, just like I planned, and the Cherub's going to the Hermitage, and I don't call UNESCO and get you shut down. Deal?"

"Terms are terrible, but I gotta admit, you have me in a corner here." One look at his face betrayed that he was nowhere near cornered; that wasn't why he was accepting. "But why are you trusting me with this when I just broke into your hotel room?"

"Because I may be good, and I may be five steps ahead'a you, but I ain't a thief, and I don't fight dirty. Not like we're stealin' it - because _we're not - _but if I'm gonna find this thing, I'm gonna need someone whose skills are...a little more unsavory."

"Never thought you'd ask." Remy's face broke into an unironic grin that had Anna's cheeks reddening for the third time in ten minutes. "Also, you might wanna get a handle on that...blushin' issue. Not good form."

"Idiot," she muttered. "Now get on out that window before I shove ya through it, and find me some leads."

**Two Days Later**

"Remy, I told you we weren't stealing anything!" Anna shouted, running as hard as her legs would allow from the beefy security guards coming after them.

"'s what you get for trustin' a thief, _chére!_" Remy's gleeful smile told her that he was enjoying this far more than he had any right to. "But if you don' wanna run, I can carry ya."

"You _idiot," _she muttered, panting. "You know what, why not?"

_He deserves it after all of this lunacy he's put me through, _Anna thought, conveniently ignoring the fact that _she'd _been the one to recruit _him. _(And under duress, at that.)

"Comin' right up, _chére,_" he said, not even sounding slightly winded (_of course), _and, after the briefest of pauses, scooped her up and picked up running again. Anna had assumed he'd go for a fireman carry (horrible but secure) or even a piggyback, but no - he'd insisted on hauling her through the streets of London _bridal-style. _

She hated that he could run unimpeded with an entire _person _in his arms, but she especially hated how much better this was - tucked against his chest, firmly in his arms - than running. Than almost _anything, _if she were being honest. Her face heated - she really _did _have to work on that - and stayed bright-red until Remy managed to hail them a taxi and set her down to step into the backseat. The guards tailing them couldn't much compete with the traffic, so they hung back, and Remy smiled smugly (and even moreso after he saw how red his companion's cheeks still were).

"You like that?" he teased.

"Shut up," she said petulantly, crossing her arms and turning to face the window instead of him.

"Workin' with you's been fun," Remy continued. "Most I've had in a while, crazy as it sounds, considerin' that you _bribed _me."

"I'll admit that it hasn't been _terrible," _Anna conceded. "You're still a money-grubbin' grave robber with no respect for anything."

"I wouldn't say _anything," _Remy countered. "I've got plenty'a respect for a woman I have no chance against."

"Oh, please."

"Takes a lot to stay as far ahead'a me as you were." He grinned cheekily. "I respect that."

"You do know we're probably not gonna find that egg, don't ya?"

Remy sighed. "Yeah, I can't find anything about that egg, and if Remy LeBeau can't find a thing, there ain't a thing to find. But we still have the Cherub."

Anna shook her head. "I told my employer about that. Said he only wanted the Necessairé. Anything else I found was s'posed to go to a museum or a gallery - that's what he wanted."

"So...I get _no _money out of this?"

"Probably not."

"No treasure?"

"The treasure of integrity, _obviously." _Anna smiled saucily in his direction.

"_Right. _No money, no loot...this really was a pointless job."

"Well, fun while it lasted, no?" Anna offered.

He nodded. "I'd say so. Workin' with you's easier than workin' against ya, that's for sure."

"Is this the part where you say somethin' cheesy about how you found something better than a Fabergé egg and then kiss me?"

Remy nearly choked. "I..._what?"_

"More poetic than 95% of those stupid movie lines about 'the greatest treasure,' honestly. But you heard me."

"You _want _me to kiss you? You'd _let _me kiss you?"

"_You'd _want to kiss _me?" _

"_Chere, _I been wantin' to kiss ya since you threw me into the dresser and called me a grave-robber!"

"Then _why _in _tarnation _didn't ya?"

"Uh, you _threw me into a dresser and called me a grave-robber." _

"Eh, that's fair." Anna shrugged. "Kinda did hate ya."

"Did my charms warm up to ya?"

"You're still an idiot."

"Yeah, sorry, now all I'm hearin' is 'kiss me.' Am I hearin' things, or..."

Anna didn't answer. Instead, she placed a hand gently on the sharp outline of his jaw, stroking circles in his stubble with her thumb, and he leaned in and met her lips in the kind of soft, tenative kiss she never would have expected from...well, _Remy. _It was the kind of kiss that made her realize why so many women in movies fell hopelessly in love with the kind of disreputable men they _had _to know would probably ditch 'em like oversized cargo in a typhoon.

And she couldn't help, when she pulled away, from whispering "whoa."

"I know, right?" Remy replied softly.

"Gotta say, this is the most literal interpretation of the phrase 'love your enemy' I've ever seen, and I don't mind it."

"Mm. Agreed."

**Reality **

**Acivian Research Vessel **

Girad groaned. "That is the _cheesiest thing _you have ever-"

"No, that title definitely belongs to the royalty one." Kaia shook her head. "Enemies-to-lovers is the _best _Terran storytelling trope."

"Uh...sure."

"Mm-hm. Enjoy it while it lasts - tomorrow's going to mark the return of the Kleenex box."

"Oh, come _on!" _


	13. Day 12: Out of Sight, Out of Time

**Day 12: because there TOTALLY isn't enough time travel in the X-Men universe as is! (A time travel AU.)**

**This one was somewhat inspired by "Somewhere in Time," a time travel movie so sappy I use it as a metric for determining whether you are a hopeless romantic or not. (Namely: if you can make it through "Somewhere in Time" without ever feeling the compulsion to chuck a brick through your screen, you probably are.) So...if you've seen that movie, you know what to - sort of - expect. Plus, I just came in from two hours of making up Romy family headcanons with Glowbug, so I am Deep In My Feels. Be warned. **

Chapter Text

**Reality **

**Day 12 - Acivian Research Vessel **

"I better not cry over this one. I don't think our species is even supposed to _do _that."

Kaia smirked, passing him a box of Kleenex. "Good luck with that."

**Virtual Reality**

**A university of no particular name - Michigan **

Anna sucked in a half-choked breath as the fashion majors responsible for outfitting her with period-accurate clothing tied a corset around her waist at an absolutely _inhumane _tightness. "Is this _s'posed _to be torture?" she asked, gasping for breath. "How'd anyone ever _wear _these?"

"Hey, you chose to go back to the 1890s, not me," said the young woman holding her corset together. "You have to look the part. This study abroad thing is, like, a _big _deal."

Anna thought, not for the first time lately, that she wished she went to school where a semester abroad meant six months in Spain and not an entire semester in _another century, _but she'd been offered an ultimatum - spend a semester traveling back to a different time or take the American History class every ex-freshman she'd spoken to had just about died in - and she'd take corsets over coursework any day. Easily.

"Evening, Anna! Ready for your trip to the past?" Dr. MacTaggert, history department chair and director of the study abroad program, walked into the room as the gaggle of costumers had her in a particularly inopportune state of corset-induced pain. She cringed at the thought of the faculty seeing her like this.

"For sure," she gasped in between panted breaths. "Can't wait."

"Girls, she's got to be able to breath in that," Dr. MacTaggert chided the group. "Historical accuracy isn't worth a cracked rib."

"_Thank _you," Anna sighed as they let her corset out slightly.

Dr. MacTaggert nodded. "I trust you remember your assignment?"

Anna nodded. "Observe the political, social, and cultural climate of your chosen era."

"And don't leave a trail behind," Dr. MacTaggert added. "No one should be close enough to you to miss you when you come back to our time. Keepin' your distance is the best way to keep the timeline intact."

Anna gulped; that was more responsibility than any twenty-year-old should have been entrusted with. "Of course."

"And remember - you touch anyone, we pull you back to the present. Immediately."

"I would never," Anna replied with more bravado than she felt.

She was _not _ready for this.

**October 1894 - an opera house **

**Somewhere in a major city **

Crammed into a corset and pushing through the hordes of people crowded around the opera house's lobby, Anna had never felt more out of place.

_This what it was like back then? Eugh. _Anna fanned herself, glad of the accessory she'd been given with this ridiculous outfit - it was necessary in such a crowd. She vaguely remembered being told that different movements of the fan had meanings, but no one could _possibly _notice that in a the can of sardines that was this lobby. She wished she'd been assigned to _any _other social event, but no; the first thing on her schedule had been a trip to the opera. (Apparently it was _the _meeting place of the rich and influential. Not her idea of a good time at all, but she'd do anything to get out of history lectures.) She'd given up trying to force herself through the crowd in this absolutely ridiculous bustle but the waiting was nearly as bad, and in her frantic search for an escape route, Anna collided with something that felt like a wall, if...warmer.

"Pardon, am I in your way?" asked the "wall's" voice. It was smooth but somehow still stilted - as if it was trying to sound like something it wasn't. Rogue would've guessed it had a hint of Southern drawl if she'd been in her right mind at the moment.

"Oh, uh, no, uh, sir. I'm just on my way...to..."

"The box?"

"The box. Right." Anna glanced up to meet the man's eyes. "Thank you."

He furrowed his brow. "Are you quite well?"

Anna nodded a little too vigorously. "Very. Completely, in fact, so now I'll be on my w-"

"_Non, _that doesn't seem like a good idea-"

"No! I'm fine!" she practically chirped, wincing at her obvious inability to act natural. "Thank you, uh, Mr.-"

"LeBeau." He reached to touch her arm and she batted it away in what she was _certain _was a horrible faux pas in this time and place, but she was _not _about to be sent back to the present before the semester was up, _thank you very much. _

"A-anna," she stammered. "Please don't touch me."

The concern on Remy's face grew even more pronounced. "Are you _certain _that nothing is the matter?"

"Well, I'm just...nervous. That's all."

"Well, I am always in the same place, if you need assistance. Box 16 - ask for Remy LeBeau."

She nodded tightly and shoved her way back through the crowed with even more intense resolve than she'd held before. This was a _mess - _she would never be able to stay out of her own world and time like this without tipping anyone off. She was a bumbling disaster, and she had neither the knowledge nor the desire to do anything about it.

As soon as she made it out the doors and into the cool night air, Anna took a few panicky breaths and sank against a wall. Her corset was killing her and she knew she'd muss up the exquisite ballgown the fashion students had designed for her at no small cost, but she had to sit down.

She never should have agreed to this.

**November 1894**

**A ballroom - the LeBeau Estate **

Anna had, somehow, made it through a month - she still wasn't quite sure how - but this experience was little more bearable now than it had been at the beginning. The total ban on any fulfilling relationship whatsoever - no one was supposed to remember her enough to notice she was gone - made the loneliness nearly unbearable, and the inner workings of the political machines she'd been assigned to investigate were as dull as they were corrupt. There was little joy in the experience, but only two months remained. She'd attend the ball she'd been assigned to observe because she had nothing better to do, but she doubted it'd be anything but miserable.

So she stepped into the ballroom with a shaky breath and nearly gasped at the sight in front of her.

What seemed like hundreds of people moved in a dizzying array of color and movement around a ballroom that could have fit an entire wing of Anna's alma mater and then some. Gazing at the dance floor was like watching a sea of colorful satins and whirling coattails ebb and flow by, and as much as everything about this situation was utterly unideal, Anna couldn't help but be enchanted by the view.

"Enjoying yourself?"

Chills of dread ran up and down Anna's spine. She knew that voice - it was the man she'd run into at the opera. His remembering her was decidedly not a good sign. "Is your family hosting?" Anna asked, trying to remain calm.

He gave her a strange look. "Of course. Did you not receive an invitation?"

"Oh, right...of course." Anna gulped. "What an, uh, lovely house."

He smiled, more because of her awkwardness than her compliment. "Thank you. No lovelier than you."

Anna's cheeks immediately went hot. "Uh..."

"You know, I've had _so many _dreadful suitors flung at me since my twentieth birthday that I've lost count," Remy said, leaning back against the doorway. "I'm expected to dance with no less than five girls tonight, and dancing with any one of them more than twice is tantamount to a declaration." He sighed. "Dreadful."

"In...deed," Anna said, trying to mimic his unnaturally-stilted manner of speaking. "Have you chosen one of those girls?"

"No, and I hope I never will, but that is not for me to decide."

"That is, indeed, dreadful," she agreed; the strange cadence of the words felt wrong as she said them.

"You, however, intrigue me."

Anna's cheeks reddened again. "Oh?"

"You do. Care for a dance?"

_Why not? _She wore gloves, and he'd probably not touch bare skin. Besides, it was the only distraction she'd been offered. "I would be honored."

He led her to the floor and, as a waltz began to play, panic rose in her throat. She had absolutely no idea what to do and she hated the feeling of helplessness she was drowning in as Remy tried to lead the pair in a waltz she couldn't contribute to. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I don't really know what I'm-"

Remy met her eyes and smiled - genuinely, the kind of gentle smile she could see in his eyes. "Inexperience can be refreshing. Too many of my partners are overtrained debutantes who never have an original thought."

Anna felt herself relaxing in his hold as the dance wore on, picking up the steps with more confidence at each turn. She almost felt light for the first time in weeks. "Why do you trust me so much when you've never met me?" she asked.

"Acting on a feeling." Remy glanced off in a vague direction. "Something told me you weren't like the people I'm forced to listen to all day, every day. You're not a pathological liar like every politician I've ever had to work with, nor are you a woman trained not to have opinions whose parents want her married to me for my fortune. You simply exist. I never see that."

"Why do you talk so formally when it's so obvious that it isn't_ you_?"

To her surprise, Remy laughed. "You're the only person I've ever met who noticed that. I don't care for it, but it's 'proper.' So..."

"There is no way around it," Anna finished. "I understand completely."

The music stopped and Anna almost felt reluctant to let it end. She'd not spoken to someone in earnest in weeks and she'd missed it dearly. As Remy kissed her gloved knuckles in farewell, she found herself feeling better than she had since she arrived.

It only took a little conversation.

**December 1894**

The cold was beginning to set in and Anna would've been glad of the distraction of the cold had she not been rushed around to party after party, function after function. She never had a moment's peace, it seemed. Unless...

"Care to dance?"

Those words always greeted her on walking into a ballroom now. After the manifold events she'd attended, and at which he'd always sought her out, Remy knew to expect her, and to expect her to be alone and in need of company. He'd stand in the doorframe awaiting her arrival, always with a ridiculous compliment on his lips. She'd never admit it, but she looked forward to those waltzes. She'd almost miss them when she returned to her rightful time two days later - but only _almost. _

This time, though, he wasn't content to keep her simply for the duration of a dance. After they danced, Remy asked if she'd like to step outside, knowing how she hated the stuffy ballroom air; she obliged eagerly and found herself leaning out over the railing with a long sigh.

"What is it?"

"Oh, nothing." Anna straightened up and turned to face him, only to flinch in alarm at the look on his face.

Pure, unadulterated infatuation. That was _all _she could see in his eyes as they looked at hers, soulful and blatantly amorous. Anna gulped.

_I don't think I was supposed to make anyone fall in love with me..._

But she couldn't bring herself to stop staring back and his face inched closer to hers and when she had to pull away from him and blurt out, "I can't touch you!", she was shocked to find that it _hurt. _She didn't know why, but something in her argued with every fiber of its being that she _wanted_this, but some lethal combination of logic and lunacy won out, and suddenly she found herself telling Remy _exactly why _she had to refuse him.

"I'm from the future and I'll be sent back to my own time in disgrace if anyone touches me" wasn't anyone's idea of a believable story, but he seemed to buy it. He nodded, stepped back, awkwardly acknowledged that he'd fallen for the one person totally out of reach -

Until Anna shook herself off, muttered, "screw it, it's only two days," cupped his cheek with her gloved hand, and pressed her lips to his.

This time, _he _was the one to flinch, but he caught on not a moment too late and returned the kiss before she felt the pull of a time manipulation device beckoning (read: dragging) her home.

For a moment, Remy simply stared at the spot where Anna had disappeared into thin air. He'd never processed her words - never considered what would happen if she'd been telling the truth.

"Anna?" he asked, his voice small, but he knew he'd get no answer.

Something told him that that kiss marked the final instant in which he'd lay eyes on her.

**Reality **

**Acivian Research Vessel **

"Honestly, Kaia, did you _have to-" _

"I don't control them! Their subconscious decisions decides the outcomes, and we're just watching-"

"But you keep making them break up!"

"Not until after they've found each other, though."

"_That's even worse!" _

"There, there." Kaia handed Girad the tissues. He glanced into its opening and frowned.

"They're gone."

"Hmph. Who's 'too attached' now?"

Bottom of Form


	14. Day 13: Denouement (We'll Meet Again)

**Day 13: with their experiment unexpectedly truncated due to lack of funding, Kaia and Girad throw their full efforts into one last scenario that will revisit past scenarios to decide, once and for all, whether any two people are ever truly meant to be.**

**You know how TV show writers will sometimes write a character out of their show with a death or disappearance because the person playing that character wants to leave/is pregnant/has a filming conflict with something else? **

**That's pretty much what's happening here.**

**We've reached the end of the road, and after twelve AUs, I'm exhausted. I lack the inspiration to come up with any more, so I'm using this alien budget cut as an excuse to continue on to the thing I've wanted to write for weeks: the final scenario, which will go back to resolve the endings of several favorite scenarios. (Of course, one is the WWI AU, and the other - by popular demand - is the one-day romance AU; I wouldn't have chosen it, but it was somehow extremely well-received, so here I am!). **

**For all of you who've supported me on this journey, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. The improvement in my writing that came about after an outpouring of support from all of you is measurable in this story and elsewhere, and I can't thank any of you enough for that. I hope this denouement, however unexpected, is everything you expected.**

Chapter Text

**Reality**

**Day 13 - Acivian Research Vessel **

"I just c-can't believe they'd _do _that, Gir!" Kaia dropped her head to her arms, a frustrated sob shaking her shoulders.

"I...can't either," Girad agreed, awkwardly patting her back. (Comfort was not his area of expertise.) "I mean, it wasn't like the project was important, or relevant, or..._useful, _but how _dare _they let us get attached to our test subjects and then _pull our funding!" _

"See, I _knew _you had more sense than you let on," Kaia sniffled. "I guess now I'll never get to use that last scenario I prepared. Today's our last day with the equipment."

"Wait, when do we have to go back?" Girad asked, a kernel of an idea forming in his mind.

"At Earth's sunset. Why?" Kaia asked, her interest piqued.

"Well...if we really want to prove our hypothesis" - Kaia couldn't help but smile wanly at _our hypothesis, _not _mine _or _yours _\- "the best thing we can possibly do is go back."

"What do you mean?"

"We need to send them back into a scenario that resolved ambiguously and see how it was supposed to end. If they still end up finding each other, we'll know."

"Girad, I'm _shocked! _That's twice that you've used your brain today!"

"May I put in a request for that simulation where they didn't know each others' identities and got separated at the end?"

"You got it. My pick has to be the wartime romance, though." Kaia clicked her nails together. "I _love _weddings."

With unexpected lightness in their demeanors, Kaia and Girad readied their equipment for one last round of tests. If this was going to be the make-or-break of the entire experiment, they had no choice but to assure that it ran perfectly.

**Virtual Reality **

**Seattle, Washington - return to Day 6**

Remy really needed to stop reading tabloids. He knew this.

But still...whenever he passed through the grocery store checkout line, they seemed to leap from the shelves. He'd had no idea the woman he'd kissed on an impulse at Pikes Place last spring was such common fodder for the gossip magazines, but he was practically powerless _not _to read whatever crap they were spouting about her now when he saw her face on the cover of a magazine. It was conducive to nothing productive, but he didn't know if he'd be able to stop even if he wanted to.

_Secret Engagement? Actress Says 'Yes' to Costar's Proposal!, _one loudly proclaimed, a huge photo of Anna Marie D'Ancanto's face splashed across its cover. (Later debunked - still stung.) _Oscar Nominee Implicated in Drunk Driving Incident, _said another.

"I really need to stop readin' t'e tabloids," Remy told himself after an article presenting "evidence" that his long-ago fling was pregnant (against all logic, it seemed). It had been nearly a year - how long would it take him to accept that they would never have worked even if she'd been honest with him? A year ago, he'd felt betrayed, angry at her deceit. Now he just felt lost. What was one supposed to do when someone waltzed into one's life and made one feel like it had been nothing but an empty shell of its potential before, only to waltz back out with the next passing wind?

He hadn't told a single person about that day, but clearly "pretend it didn't happen" (or...claim to be pretending that when, in reality, that could not be further from reality) wasn't the solution it had promised to be. He needed to do something about this.

_Uh...email her publicist, maybe? _he thought, cringing at the ungraceful directness of the suggestion. _Or I could...maybe...something else I could try is..._

_Yeah, I got nothing. _

Flopping back against his pillows, he opened his email inbox - the one for his non-work account, the hadn't touched it in months - and disinterestedly scanned through the unread messages before clicking the "compose" icon. Most of them were business promotions or (he cringed again) extended family email chains he'd completely ignored. One, though, dated September of the previous year, caught his eye. "Anna :)," it was labelled, with the subject "I can explain."

"This oughta be good," he sighed, opening the email. He didn't know any Annas (his mind briefly trailed to Anna Marie, a thought it soon dismissed as nonsense). _Dear Remy, _it read. "Hm. Guess she knows me. Could be a scam, though."

_Six months ago, we met in Pike Place Market. I don't know if you still remember me, but you haven't left my mind since I met you. Maybe you saw the articles about us - believe me, my publicist gave me hell for those - and maybe, if I'm lucky, you still think about that day sometimes. Maybe, if you have and you do, you're angry with me for not telling you who I was. I can understand that. I would be too, but I promise I can explain. _

_My full name, as you might know, is Anna Marie D'Ancanto, and I'm an actress. When we met, I was shooting a movie called _Someone Else _in Seattle. It was a really heavy film, and by the end of it, I was worn-out - physically, mentally, emotionally. I needed a day off, so I kind of just disappeared. I snuck off to the one place I knew I could get lost in a crowd, found a local to show me around, and ended up with more than I bargained for. _

_See, I always knew that my Pike Place day was going to have to be brushed under the rug after it ended, but I didn't expect it to leave so much unresolved. I've been thinking about that kiss since it happened and I still don't know if I can believe it actually happened. Things like that - things that are real and spontaneous and unscripted and don't come with a catch - just don't happen to me. I'm not sure if I'm in love with the idea of it or with you, but I'm in love with that memory for more reasons than one. Having to disappear and being unable to reach out to you again was one of the most painful decisions of my career because here was something real, something that didn't require a contract or a payment, and I had to throw it away. _

_I hated my publicity team for that, but they can't stop me from using an email no one knows exists (please, *please* overlook the fact that my address is annabananaluv123 - I made this when I was 13, okay?) to contact you now. _

_I know it's far off, but I'll be back in Seattle May 14th-20th of next year for another movie, and if you felt like more needed to be said, too, you know where to find me. My number is (202)-088-9003 - if you'll be there, text me. _

_And thank you._

_Love, _

_Anna Marie_

Remy's heart caught in his throat and, without a single further thought, he threw on a jacket and ran for his apartment's elevator at breakneck speed. He didn't stop to lock his door, or grab any cash, or _anything _that might have seemed logical to do before leaving one's house - all he knew was that it was May 15th, this was the luckiest coincidence he'd ever witnessed, and he had to get to Pike Place. In his haste, he nearly caused at least four accidents en route to the market, and shoved through crowds with determination that startled most of the patrons he collided with in a mad dash for the flower tent.

There was no where else he'd find her. If she was here - if she'd gotten the _I'll be there _text he'd sent off - she'd be waiting for him in the place they first met. But when he entered the tent, the crowd inside was so dense that he had to resort to calling her. "Anna?" he shouted over the din of shopping and buying.

It wasn't the romantic reunion he'd imagined - walking into an empty tent, picked-over and sparse as it had been the day he kissed her here, and seeing her in the middle of the floor, staring at him, dewy-eyed with disbelief, saying nothing - but a tiny body shoved itself through the crowds, threw itself at him with force that nearly knocked him through the tent wall, and immediately met his lips, he couldn't think straight enough to protest.

She kissed him slowly at first, as if she wasn't sure how after all this time, before she pulled away to stare at him with alarming intensity.

"You sure know how to keep a girl waitin'," she complained, and Remy couldn't resist the urge to pull her into his arms and hang on for dear life. She laughed into his shirt.

"Nice to see you, too," she said, loosening his grip enough to look up at him. "Where to?"

"We should do this more often," he mumbled, so dazed he couldn't properly answer the question.

"Agreed, but _where to_?"

"With you? Anywhere."

**Back in Reality - Acivian Research Vessel**

"So far, so good," Girad concluded. "You think the next one could actually overturn all that evidence?"

"Well, if he dies of influenza-"

"_Kaia!" _

"Or she does-"

_"Kaia..." _

"Or they break off their engagement-"

_"Can you _not?"

Kaia grinned deviously, her old wit returning in spades. "Reasonably? Probably not. So let's just enjoy this."

**Virtual Reality **

**New Orleans, 1919**

Most brides, Anna Marie has heard, are nervous on their wedding days. She doesn't understand why.

For her, stepping into that white dress, holding still while Katherine and her mother pin her hair back, walking down that aisle on her little brother's arm, seem impossibly easy. Maybe because, after so many months of war and pandemic and anxiety, marrying her Remy is the most blessed relief in the world - all those months of "maybe" and "I hope" brought to a close by an exchange "I do."

When he kisses her and the small crowd gathered under the magnolias in Anna's backyard bursts into applause, it takes all she has not to burst into tears on the altar. As soon as she can sneak off, she bolts for the house, only stopping once she reaches the front porch to collapse on the porch swing. Gasping for breath (only in part due to her sprint in a full-length dress), she lets the tears she's been holding back spill down her face. When footsteps approach minutes later, she doesn't hear them until she feels a weight settle on the swing beside her.

"What is it, _ma colombe?" _Remy asks, wrapping his arms around her shaking shoulders. She leans into him readily and it takes all he has not to breathe a sigh of relief - she's clearly not upset with _him. _

"I-i'm sorry," she stammers. "I know I shouldn't be cryin' at my wedding, but...I thought I lost you, and now..."

He kisses the crown of her head. "_Non, _I'm hard't get rid of."

"Stay that way," she says, buring her face in his shoulder.

"'Course, _ma colombe." _He pauses, and once her sniffling dies down, he resumes speaking. "I told you yet that you're th' most beautiful thing I t'ink I've ever seen?"

She smiles - it's watery, but an improvement. "You don't look bad yourself."

He brushes his lips against hers, brief and light but just enough to be too tantalizing not to make her want another. "I ever tell you about the kiss letter?"

"The what?" Anna Marie perks up a little at that. "No, you never did."

"Oh." Remy chuckles to himself. "Uh, well...I had this letter to you I'd only work on when I really started't t'ink I'd lose my mind. All it had in it was all t'ways I wanted't kiss ya when I got back and married'y. You'd be scandalized."

"Oh, would I?" Anna Marie asks teasingly. "You still have it?"

"Would I _ever _get rid'a somethin' like that?" Remy asks, his hand resting against her thigh. "Where else d'you expect me to get my ideas,_ chére?" _

True to form and expectation, Anna's cheeks flushed. "May I read it?" she asks shyly.

"Oh, no, _chére, _this's one that _I _gotta read't _you." _

"Well, keep your voice down, then," she says, half-excited and half-paranoid that the neighbors - or, worse, her _brother -_ will hear him and pitch a fit.

"Sure." He fishes the letter - which he never keeps too far from him, out of his jacket pocket. "'kay, I'm gonna skip all the introduction parts an' get straight't the kissin'."

"Figures," Anna teases. He leans over and kisses her nose - sometimes she thinks he spends his days looking for every possible excuse to touch her after so long without a chance to - before he begins, reading words he'd normally never say out loud (it never fails to amuse Anna Marie that his writing voice was so different than his speaking voice) with his signature..._flair. _

"I'm gonna kiss you as soon as the light wakes me up, whether or not you're awake yet, not wantin' t'get out of bed 'cause I've already got everything I need right there - warm sheets'n the love of my life."

She leans into his shoulder. "I'm gonna hold you to that, you old romantic. How's that 'scandalous'?"

"Just wait." Remy grins wickedly. "I'm gonna kiss you long and good after we get home from work 'cause eight hours is too long't go without kissin' you."

"Agreed," Anna Marie replies, tucking her feet up under her on the swing. "What else?"

"I'm gonna kiss you in the middle'a the street sometimes because sometimes I love'y too much to help m'self."

"Wanna start now?" she teases.

"Don't tempt me, _ma colombe. _Your neighbors..."

She kisses him anyway, though likely not for the duration or with the intensity that he'd intended when he wrote that. "Next, please."

"I'm gonna kiss you up against the wall-"

"Ooooo_kaaaay, _maybe that's one for a _private setting," _Anna Marie cuts him off, blushing madly. "Any others that are _safe to disclose in earshot of virtually everyone I know?" _

Remy scans the list. "Uhhh..."

She swats his arm. "Of course there aren't."

"I married you! What did you expect?"

Anna Marie leans into him, her tears totally subsided. "When was the last time I told you that I love you more than life itself?"

In an instant, his teasing demeanor gives way to a gentler one. He doesn't say anything, just pulls her into a tighter embrace. "_Ma colombe..." _he starts, trailing off when he realizes he never actually planned on finish that statement.

"Hate to ruin a moment, but the party's gonna be a little suspicious if they can't find the bride and groom," Anna Marie sighs. "Shall we?"

He offers his hand. "'Course. After all, we got the rest of our lives for everythin' else."

**Reality **

**Acivian Research Vessel **

"Peer review's going to _hate _this experiment," Girad said gleefully. "That is, if we even _get _peer-reviewed."

"Always so anti-establishment," Kaia clucked. "Is it bad that I wanted to hear the rest of that letter?"

Girad snickered. "Of course you did."

"Well. I think we can pretty affirmatively say that there's _something _valid about this whole 'soulmate' thing," Kaia said. "Certainly with these two. We'd need more tests to prove anything, but..."

"Ah, yes, the consummate scientist," Girad sighs. "Can't take one look at a result without 'we need to run more tests!'. Typical..."

"Hey, I _said _the idea had merit, and I thought _I _was the one who wanted to prove that they were soulmates, not you."

"Love has a way of winning you over."

Kaia burst out laughing. "Are you _listening _to yourself?" she choked. "You sound like _me!" _

"There are worse things, you know!"

"I guess we should wake them up now," Kaia said after a brief pause. "I'll miss 'em, but they'll be happy to know that they were such useful test subjects."

"Are we going to tell them what scenarios they were put into?" Girad asked. "Because I'd _pay _to see what they'd think of some of your simulations."

Kaia glared at him. "Not on your life."

"Fine, then." Girad raised his hands in defeat. "I suppose the world will never know."

"Well, peer review will," Kaia said cheerfully. "And, like you said, I don't know how much they're going to like what they read."

FINIS


End file.
